Efficient SWE Agent Benchmarking via Trajectory-Aware Evaluation
Quick summary
arXiv:2609.01603v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Evaluating software engineering agents on realistic benchmarks is costly, since each task may require multi-step code exploration, modification, and test execution. Existing efficient evaluation methods select representative subsets to estimate full-benchmark performance, but are largely result-only: they fit historical pass/fail response matrices or static task semantics, discarding how agents solve problems. We propose PTA-IRT, a Privileged Trajectory-Aware Item Response Theory framework that fuses process and outcome signals. Historical exec
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2609.01603v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Evaluating software engineering agents on realistic benchmarks is costly, since each task may require multi-step code exploration, modification, and test execution.
- Existing efficient evaluation methods select representative subsets to estimate full-benchmark performance, but are largely result-only: they fit historical pass/fail response matrices or static task semantics, discarding how agents solve problems.
- We propose PTA-IRT, a Privileged Trajectory-Aware Item Response Theory framework that fuses process and outcome signals.
Why it matters
The value of this work lies as much in how it was tested as in the claim itself. Sample design, baselines, uncertainty and replication help separate a laboratory result from real-world impact.

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