Automated Software Engineering

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Overview

Automated Software Engineering studies how to automate software work, from requirements analysis and design to coding, testing, maintenance, and deployment. Common approaches combine language-model agents with retrieval, static analysis, search-based methods, executable specifications, and test-driven feedback to resolve repository issues, refactor code, generate tests, or document systems. Researchers evaluate these systems on real repositories and task-specific benchmarks, measuring not just whether changes pass tests but also correctness, regressions, completeness, cost, and developer usefulness. Agents are increasingly capable, but long-horizon changes, architectural judgment, reliable verification, and the trade-off between autonomy and human oversight remain central challenges.

Latest papers

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82 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Skill Dreaming: Evolving Repository Skills through Pull Request Streams

    Oct 26, 2026Xinyuan Song, Hasibul Haque, Jay Somasundaram +3Automated Software EngineeringLLM Agent Skill Learning

    Causal Dynamics Lab, USA

  2. Software Engineering LLMs: Why We Need Them and How Software Engineering Helps Build Them

    Oct 24, 2026Amir M. Ebrahimi, Mohammed Mehedi Hasan, Seyed Shayan Daneshvar +3Code Language ModelsLLM Training

    Queen’s University, Canada · University of Manitoba, Canada · Center for Software Excellence, Huawei Technologies, Canada

  3. Automating Feature Flag Cleanup at Scale with Multi-Agent LLM Systems: An Industrial Experience at DoorDash

    Oct 22, 2026Atharv Chandratre, Jai DatarAutomated Software EngineeringWorkflow Automation

    DoorDash, Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA

  4. AI-Based End-to-End Automotive Design and Software Development for SDVs

    Oct 21, 2026Nenad Petrovic, Alois KnollModel-Driven EngineeringAI-Assisted Software Development

    Technical University of Munich, Munich

  5. LintEval: Benchmarking LLMs on Linter-Guided File Refactoring

    Oct 14, 2026Tongwei Deng, Jinyu Zhu, Yue Cao +3Automated Code RefactoringCode Language Models

    School of Computer Science, Peking University · Key Lab of HCST (PKU), MOE; SCS, Peking University · School of Software Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University

  6. Deleting Code Without Losing Knowledge: Regenerative Software for Python Libraries

    Oct 12, 2026Thomas Bartz-BeielsteinAutomated Software EngineeringCode Generation

  7. Harness Engineering for Software Engineering via Modular Executable Dev-Primitives

    Oct 6, 2026Haibo Jin, Xinjie Li, Peng Kuang +1Multi-Agent LLM SystemsSoftware Engineering Agents

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA · The Pennsylvania State University, USA

  8. Is manual software optimization a thing of the past?

    Sep 29, 2026Pavlin G. Poličar, Martin Špendl, Tomaž HočevarSoftware Engineering AgentsAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Faculty of Computer and Information Science University of Ljubljana Večna pot 113, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

  9. SafeLLM4SE: Statistical Evaluation and Reporting for LLM-based Software Engineering Systems

    Sep 29, 2026Francisco OrtinLLM EvaluationLLM Reliability

    University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain · Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland

  10. Towards an AI Software Factory for Data Systems

    Sep 28, 2026Anna Pavlenko, Bogdan Crivat, Brandon Haynes +23Automated Software EngineeringAI-Assisted Software Development

    Microsoft · University of Wisconsin-Madison · GitHub

  11. CUA-SWE: When Computer-Use Agents Meet Visual Software Engineering

    Sep 26, 2026Prince Zizhuang Wang, Chenhao Liang, Zelong Xu +6Computer-Use Agent BenchmarksSoftware Engineering

    Carnegie Mellon University · University of Southern California · University of Wisconsin–Madison +2

  12. A Lean and Spec-Driven AI-Assisted Software Development Lifecycle for Applied AI Education: The AI-SDLC Approach

    Sep 21, 2026Andreas Martin, Sandro SchwanderAI-Assisted Software DevelopmentSoftware Engineering

    FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, School of Business, Riggenbachstrasse 16, 4600 Olten, Switzerland

  13. Grounding SWE-Agent Decisions in Architecture-0 Design: Navigating Unknown Unknowns through Physical Mapping

    Sep 15, 2026Zhongkai Wang, Yan LiuSoftware Architecture DesignSoftware Engineering

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, China

  14. AttnCompress: Dynamic Attention-Guided Trajectory Compression for Software Engineering Agents

    Sep 8, 2026Zhengran Zeng, Yixin Li, Rui Xie +2Software Engineering AgentsAutomated Software Engineering

    Peking University, China

  15. From Reading Code to Reading Spec: A Verified Layer for LLM-Driven Codebase Maintenance

    Sep 6, 2026Xinhao Zhang, Jingjie Lu, Kunpeng Liu +1Automated Software EngineeringRepository-Level Code Generation

    Portland State University, USA · Clemson University, USA

  16. Beyond Code Generation: Reliability, Verification, and Cost Economics in the Agentic Software Development Lifecycle

    Sep 4, 2026Happy BhatiSoftware Engineering AgentsAutomated Software Engineering

  17. Super Library Agent: Joint Generation and Maintenance of Multiple Applications Beyond the Single Codebase

    Aug 29, 2026Daegyu Sung, Yukyeong Lee, Geon Park +2Automated Code RefactoringSoftware Engineering

    KAIST

  18. Bug Localization from Bug Reports: A Multi-Objective Approach

    Aug 27, 2026Waleed Ahmad, Mehtab Kiran Suddle, Maryam BashirAutomated Software EngineeringRecommender Systems

    FAST School of Computing, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

  19. SWE Refactor Bench: Can Coding Agents Complete a Long-Horizon, Whole-Repository Stack Migration?

    Aug 24, 2026Deyao Hong, Yizhe Chi, Wenyi Li +7Automated Software EngineeringAI Coding Agents

    Navers Lab, Einsia.AI · Tsinghua University

  20. REFINE: A Multi-Agent LLM Approach for Evidence-Guided Code Refactoring

    Aug 21, 2026Muhammad Waseem, Aakash Ahmad, Pekka AbrahamssonAutomated Code RefactoringAutomated Software Engineering

    Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland · Computing, University of Derby, Derby, United Kingdom

  21. SkillForge: Self-Distilling Agents for Project-Specific Issue Resolution

    Aug 19, 2026Silin Chen, Han Li, Xiaodong Gu +2Automated Software EngineeringLLM Agent Skill Learning

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  22. Specification-first convergence with an AI coding agent: a case study of dismantling a core architectural invariant across 189 files in a 717k-line codebase with no test oracle and no human code review

    Aug 12, 2026Joel AbenhaimSoftware EngineeringAI Agent Reliability

    AI Sovereign Labs, Paris, France

  23. Persistent Recursive Worlds Enable Autonomous Software Evolution

    Aug 11, 2026Beichen Huang, Zhenyu Liang, Bowen Zheng +1Automated Software EngineeringRepository-Level Code Generation

    Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong SAR, China

  24. Active-SWE: Benchmarking Coding Agents for Proactive Bug Fixing without Issue Reports

    Aug 5, 2026Haobin Li, Ping Deng, Weizhong Qian +4Automated Program RepairAI Coding Agents

    Sichuan University · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · Independent Researchers

  25. RefactorAssist: Agentic Refinement for Reliable Code Refactoring

    Aug 2, 2026Jonathan Cordeiro, Shayan Noei, Ying ZouLLM Self-RefinementAutomated Program Repair

    Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

  26. MindForge: Teaching Small Language Models Whole-Life-Cycle Software Engineering via Source-Free Program Synthesis

    Jul 29, 2026Yihao Chen, Shi Chang, Khaled Chawa +4Program SynthesisAutomated Software Engineering

    2Queen’s University · 1Huawei Canada · University of Manitoba

  27. AI4PLE: A Methodology for Integrating AI into Product Line Engineering

    Jul 24, 2026Bedir TekinerdoganSoftware EngineeringAutomated Software Engineering

    Information Technology, Wageningen University & Research Wageningen, The Netherlands

  28. CODENS: Transforming Code Changes into Living, Accessible, and Queryable Documentation

    Jul 20, 2026Abdelhak Kelious, Chyrine Tahri, Eliot BardetKG ConstructionGraph Retrieval-Augmented Generation

    CAPSENS Paris, France

  29. Is Model Instability just Noise to be Tolerated or a Property that can be Managed?

    Jul 11, 2026Amirali Rayegan, Lunxiao Li, Tim MenziesStochastic OptimizationAutomated Software Engineering

    North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

  30. Property-Driven Synthetic Data Engineering for Data-Scarce Software Systems: Reflections from the Breast Cancer Domain

    Jul 7, 2026Aurora Francesca Zanenga, Andrea Bombarda, Marsha Chechik +4Synthetic Data GenerationAutomated Software Engineering

    University of Bergamo Bergamo, Italy · University of Toronto Toronto, Canada · Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, IRCCS Rozzano, Italy +2