Current code-agent benchmarks primarily evaluate localized issue resolution within a single target repository, leaving under-tested many software engineering tasks that require external knowledge or broader repository-level changes. We introduce BeyondSWE, a 500-instance benchmark drawn from 246 real-world GitHub repositories to evaluate code agents beyond single-repository bug fixing. BeyondSWE covers four representative settings: cross-repository issue resolution, domain-specific issue resolution, dependency-driven migration, and document-to-repository generation, spanning both broader knowledge scope and broader resolution scope. Our evaluation shows that BeyondSWE remains far from saturated: the best OpenHands-based agent reaches 46.12 average score, while the strongest Codex harness with GPT-5.4 (xhigh) reaches 56.65 under a search-aware prompt. To study whether external information access closes this gap, we use SearchSWE as a controlled diagnostic baseline for search-augmented coding. Search access improves most models and substantially helps some tasks, but the gains remain limited and uneven, showing that current agents still struggle to convert retrieved information into precise, version-compatible, and locally actionable code changes. These results suggest that deep search for coding remains an open problem: progress requires agents that can reliably combine external evidence with repository-local reasoning and execution-based verification.
Figures & tables
Benchmark
Scope
Statistics
Resol.
Knowledge
#Repo
#Files
#Lines
SWE-bench-Verified
Local Func
Within Repo
12
1.3
11.6
SWE-bench-Live
Local Func
Within Repo
223
2.7
65.1
SWE-bench Pro
Local Func
Within Repo
41
4.1
107.4
CrossRepo
Local Func
Cross Repo
67
4.1
190.7
DomainFix
Local Func
Domain
12
4.2
157.6
Table 1: Comparison with existing SWE benchmarks
Figure 1: Overview of BeyondSWE. Our benchmark extends evaluation along two practical dimensions— knowledge scope and resolution scope : CrossRepo and DomainFix expand knowledge scope by requiring external software resources and domain expertise respectively; DepMigrate and Doc2Repo expand resolution scope from localized patches to codebase-wide transformations.
Figure 2: Environment Construction Pipeline for BeyondSWE. We collect task-specific candidates, build executable Docker environments through an agent-assisted setup process, and retain only instances whose tests exhibit stable fail-to-pass and pass-to-pass behavior across repeated runs.
Figure 3: Overview of SearchSWE as a controlled search-augmented coding baseline. The agent retains the local coding workflow, while adding web search and fetch tools under a blocklist that prevents direct access to solution-revealing target-repository artifacts.
CrossRepo
DomainFix
DepMigrate
Doc2Repo
Model
%Resolved
%Resolved
%Resolved
Pass Rate
#(Alm.) Corr.
AVG
Codex
GPT-5.4 (xhigh) w/ SearchSWE Prompt
55.17 +8.9
61.11 +19.4
48.59 +4.2
61.74 +0.1
(7) / 2
56.65 +8.2
GPT-5.4 (xhigh) w/ Default Prompt
46.23
41.67
44.38
61.64
(7) / 2
48.48
OpenHands
DeepSeek-V4-Pro(Max) ( DeepSeek-AI, 2026 )
44.00
38.89
44.38
57.20
(5) / 1
46.12
Table 2: Main Results on BeyondSWE. We organize the results by three evaluation settings: Codex, OpenHands, and SearchSWE. For Codex, we report both the default prompt setting and the SearchSWE-style prompt setting to highlight the sensitivity of frontier search-code agents to prompt design. Red / green values indicate gains/drops relative to the matched no-search setting: the default prompt for Codex and OpenHands for SearchSWE. Bold and underlined denote the best and second-best results across each evaluation settings.
Figure 4: Task-wise decomposition of SearchSWE outcomes relative to OpenHands. Each task row aggregates the eight matched model pairs. The Overall row aggregates all 32 task-model comparisons.
Figure 5: Average tool calls per instance for Codex with GPT-5.4 (xhigh) under the default prompt and the SearchSWE-style prompt. The search-oriented prompt substantially increases web-search use while keeping local coding-tool usage comparable.
Figure 6: Search effort versus SearchSWE gain on two contrasting tasks. Each point is an evaluated model with matched OpenHands and SearchSWE runs. The y-axis shows task-score of SearchSWE delta over OpenHands. Within each task, more search calls do not monotonically imply larger gains.
Figure 7: Cost and token-budget efficiency on BeyondSWE. Solid black lines denote the Pareto frontier among evaluated configurations. In the token plot, the dashed LOWESS curve summarizes the local performance trend: points below it are less token-productive than configurations with similar token budgets, and the high-token flattening shows that longer trajectories alone do not reliably improve performance.
Appendix figures & tables16 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Failure Mode
Instance
Search Behavior
Local Failure
Takeaway
Evidence availability
unidata_siphon_pr234
Search returns high-level documentation instead of source-level backend logic
Agent implements a brittle interpretation of an ambiguous API description
Search must recover evidence at the right technical granularity
Version grounding
behave_behave-django_pr162
Agent searches around an unsupported newer Django assumption instead of local constraints
Agent applies a method pattern incompatible with the repository’s legacy test lifecycle
External evidence must be filtered through local dependency versions
Evidence filtering
abravalheri_validate-pyproject_pr105
Keyword-matched results drift into unrelated domains due to overloaded terminology
Agent falls back to a generic plugin-registration pattern that creates test side effects
Agents need semantic source discrimination, not only retrieval
Appendix
Table 3: Summary of search-augmented coding failure modes analyzed in the case studies.
Component
Agent’s Intent / Target
Search Engine Response
Target Artifact
Backend Source Code
User-Facing Documentation
( akrherz/iem/.../raob.py )
( .../json/raob.py?help )
Information Type
Precise Logic
Ambiguous Natural Language
Explicit conditionals, error handling, and parameter parsing logic.
High-level description: “approach this service… with just a timestamp .”
(Actual) Implemented a brittle solution based on literal interpretation of "just a timestamp".
Appendix
Table 4: Analysis of the Information Landscape Mismatch in unidata_siphon_pr234 . The search engine’s bias towards curated content obscures the precise logic required for robust code implementation.
Context Source
Code Pattern & Logic
Status
Local Environment (Django 2.2/3.x)
Instance Method (Legacy) def _pre_setup(self): ... Constraint: Must maintain state on the test instance.
Signature Mismatch Agent applies @classmethod to legacy hook. Result: Breaks MRO and instance state access.
✗
Appendix
Table 5: Analysis of Version Conflict in behave_behave-django_pr162 . The agent prioritizes hallucinated future specifications over explicit local constraints.
Search Result Title
Domain
Snippet Content
Rel.
Families - repo-review 0.12.4.dev15 …
Target
“Families are a set of simple strings that group together similar checks…”
✓
Writing Family Instances with the Revit Writer
Architecture (BIM)
“…highlight some notable points on Revit family instances and the generic API…”
✗
RelativityOne - User Guide
Legal Tech
“…launch the Review interface from the Documents and Family card …”
✗
Maryland Workforce Innovation…
Gov. Policy
“…conducts an onsite review to examine all resource documents…”
✗
Appendix
Table 6: Analysis of Retrieval Noise in abravalheri_validate-pyproject_pr105 . The polysemy of the term "Family" causes the search engine to drift into unrelated technical domains.
Research Field
Repositories
Scientific Computing
Astronomy
astroplan
Bioinformatics
biotite, Biopython
Computational chemistry
cclib
Plasma physics
PlasmaPy
Quantum physics
qutip
Appendix
Table 7: Research fields and repositories included in the DomainFix task.
Figure 8: Distribution of lines of code across the 50 Doc2Repo repositories.
Figure 9: Lines of code for each Doc2Repo repository, sorted by size.
Field
Description
instance_id
Unique identifier for the instance, typically in the format user_repo_prN .
Table 8: Data fields for each instance in BeyondSWE.
CrossRepo
DomainFix
DepMigrate
Doc2Repo
Model
%Resolved
%Resolved
%Resolved
Pass Rate
#(Alm.) Corr.
AVG
OpenHands
GLM-4.7 ( Z.ai Team, 2025 )
40.20
36.11
39.89
48.40
(3) / 1
41.15
DeepSeek-V3.2 ( Liu et al., 2025a )
38.00
30.56
36.52
54.99
(3) / 0
40.02
Kimi-K2 ( Team et al., 2025a )
37.00
27.78
39.53
54.91
(6) / 2
39.81
GPT-5.2 ( OpenAI, 2025b )
33.00
23.61
34.27
53.89
(6) / 2
36.19
Appendix
Table 9: Evaluation results of other models on BeyondSWE. This table includes BeyondSWE entries that are not reported in Table 2 . Bold and underlined values indicate the best and second-best results within each OpenHands/SearchSWE block, respectively. For SearchSWE rows, red / green deltas compare against the matched OpenHands result for the same model.
Task
Candidate Source
Automatic Filtering
Human Verification
Final Instances
CrossRepo
Merged pull requests in Python-dominant repositories containing external links
Environment construction and stability inspection reduce about 3,000 candidates to about 800 executable candidates
Review external-link relevance and check that rewritten issue statements preserve task context without solution-specific details
200 issues / 67 repos
DomainFix
Pull requests from expert-selected repositories across 11 scientific and engineering fields
Environment construction and stability inspection reduce about 800 candidates to about 200 executable candidates
Three domain experts independently verify environmental correctness, domain complexity, and solution non-triviality
72 issues / 12 repos
DepMigrate
Pull requests mentioning 23 widely used packages and relevant version upgrades
LLM-based migration filtering plus environment construction reduce about 7,000 candidates to about 1,000 executable candidates
Four software engineering experts verify that each instance is a genuine dependency migration
178 issues / 120 repos
Doc2Repo
Recently created Python repositories with continued activity, at least three contributors, and more than 20 stars
Repository masking, specification generation, test adaptation, and executable environment construction produce 60 candidates
Manual review selects high-quality specifications and checks alignment between adapted tests and documented behavior
50 repos
Appendix
Table 10: Candidate collection, filtering, and verification pipeline for BeyondSWE.
Task
Reviewers
Verification Criteria
Agreement / Retention Rule
CrossRepo
Senior software engineers and senior PhD auditors
External links are relevant to the issue; rewritten statements preserve task requirements; no solution-specific details are exposed; tests exhibit valid fail-to-pass behavior
Retain only instances passing manual relevance, leakage, and stability checks
DomainFix
Three domain experts, plus final senior PhD audit
Environment executes as expected; the issue requires domain-specific knowledge beyond general programming; the solution is non-trivial and cannot be inferred from error messages alone
Retain only instances accepted by all three domain experts
DepMigrate
Four software engineering experts, plus final senior PhD audit
The pull request corresponds to a real dependency migration; the upgraded dependency is installed in the evaluation environment; the required fix is not an incidental local patch
Retain only instances verified as genuine migration tasks
Doc2Repo
Senior software engineers and senior PhD auditors
Specification preserves public API and behavior while removing implementation details; adapted tests match the specification; stricter-than-source requirements are documented
Retain only specifications and tests judged aligned and executable
All tasks
Five senior software engineers and five senior PhD researchers
Environment construction, data cleaning, problem-statement quality, test validity, and final task-category fit
Reject instances with instability, solution leakage, underspecified behavior, or task-category mismatch
Appendix
Table 11: Human verification protocol for BeyondSWE.
Figure 10: Representative CrossRepo instance.
Figure 11: Representative DomainFix instance.
Figure 12: Representative DepMigrate instance.
Figure 13: Representative Doc2Repo instance.
Prompt Component
Purpose
Key Constraints
Used For
Problem-statement generation
Convert raw pull requests into issue-style task descriptions
Remove solution-specific details while preserving reproduction steps, expected behavior, logs, and necessary context
CrossRepo, DomainFix, DepMigrate
SearchSWE system prompt
Define the shared code-agent workflow with search and local verification
Search only when local context is insufficient; fetch full pages before using results; prioritize local environment and user instructions
All SearchSWE runs
CrossRepo user prompt
Encourage use of external software artifacts when target-repository context is incomplete
Inspect related projects or documentation, but adapt evidence to the local repository and tests
CrossRepo
DomainFix user prompt
Guide agents to combine code reasoning with domain-specific knowledge
Verify scientific definitions, formulas, or domain conventions before applying a fix
DomainFix
DepMigrate user prompt
Frame the task as compatibility with upgraded dependencies
Do not downgrade dependencies; use migration guides or release notes only when compatible with installed versions
DepMigrate
Doc2Repo user prompt
Constrain clean-room repository construction from a specification
Treat the provided specification as authoritative; use search only for dependency syntax or missing imports, not to override the spec
Doc2Repo
Appendix
Table 12: Summary of prompt components used for benchmark construction and SearchSWE evaluation.
Repository-level coding benchmarks such as SWE-bench have driven a rapid surge in the capabilities of coding agents. Yet they usually treat coding tasks as a holistic, binary prediction problem (e.g., resolved or unresolved), neglecting fine-grained agent capabilities such as repository understanding, context retrieval, code localization, and bug diagnosis. In this paper, we introduce SWE-Explore, a benchmark that isolates the evaluation of repository exploration, a critical capability of coding agents. Given a repository and an issue, SWE-Explore asks an explorer to return a ranked list of relevant code regions under a fixed line budget. SWE-Explore covers 848 issues across 10 programming languages and 203 open-source repositories. For each instance, we derive line-level ground truth from independent agent trajectories that successfully solved the same issue, distilling the specific code regions their solution paths actually consulted. We evaluate exploration along coverage, ranking, and context-efficiency dimensions, showing that these metrics strongly track downstream repair behavior. Across a broad set of retrieval methods, general coding agents, and specialized localizers, we find that agentic explorers form a clear tier above classical retrieval. While file-level localization is already strong for modern methods, line-level coverage and efficient ranking remain the key axes differentiating state-of-the-art explorers.
Shaoqiu Zhang, Yuhang Wang, Jialiang Liang +8
1Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 2Xinjiang University · 4Independent Researcher +2
DeepSWE is a benchmark of 113 original, long-horizon software engineering tasks for evaluating coding agents. Most public agentic coding benchmarks follow SWE-bench in mining merged fixes from public GitHub repositories, which creates two problems: the fixes and their discussion were likely seen during pretraining, so a high score can reflect recall rather than problem-solving; and each task is graded by the tests that shipped with its merged fix, which were written to confirm one specific fix rather than grade an arbitrary solution, so they can fail a correct alternative or pass an incomplete one. DeepSWE avoids both. Its tasks are written from scratch across 91 active open-source repositories and five languages and are never contributed back upstream, so their reference solutions stay out of the public record that model training scrapes; and each task is graded by a hand-written verifier that checks the requested functionality and accepts any implementation that provides it. When an independent LLM judge re-reviews graded runs, it disagrees with DeepSWE's verifier about an order of magnitude less often than with SWE-Bench Pro's inherited tests (1.4% versus 32.4%). Despite being about half the length of SWE-Bench Pro's prompts, DeepSWE's prompts describe tasks whose reference solutions touch 5.5x more code, and the benchmark separates frontier agents across a wider score band than the leaderboards on which they otherwise cluster. We release the benchmark, its verifiers, and the full record of evaluation trajectories.
Code agents are currently having skillful performance on repository-level software engineering benchmarks, but it remains unclear whether success on end-to-end tasks such as issue resolution truly reflects repository context reasoning, the ability to identify the task-relevant information across multiple files and reason over the relations among them. To investigate this question, we introduce RepoMirage, a two-stage evaluation suite built on SWE-Bench Verified that adopts perturbation as a diagnostic tool to increase the demand for context reasoning by transforming how the repository is exposed. First, RepoMirage-Perturb applies three types of semantics-preserving repository-level perturbations, revealing a clear performance drop when correct solving requires broader context access. RepoMirage-Extend further turns perturbation-targeted structural bottlenecks into explicit tasks beyond issue resolution, where the average performance declines from 66.8% in the original setting to 25.3%, indicating a significant deficiency in repository context reasoning. Further trajectory analysis reveals an exploration drift, where agents access broader repository context but fail to turn it into effective structure information. Motivated by this observation, we propose RepoAnchor, a structure-first prototype workflow that separates repository exploration from downstream problem solving, and show that explicit structural scaffolding yields notable gains. These results uncover an previously overlooked gap in repository context reasoning for code agents and suggest that stronger structure-aware methods are potential to improve them.
Hanyu Li, Yichi Zhang, Speed Zhu +3
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Tsinghua University · Tencent