Protocode: Prototype-Driven Interpretability for Code Generation in LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bodla, Krishna Vamshi, Yang, Haizhao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bodla, Krishna Vamshi
Yang, Haizhao
author_facet Bodla, Krishna Vamshi
Yang, Haizhao
contents Since the introduction of Large Language Models (LLMs), they have been widely adopted for various tasks such as text summarization, question answering, speech-to-text translation, and more. In recent times, the use of LLMs for code generation has gained significant attention, with tools such as Cursor and Windsurf demonstrating the ability to analyze massive code repositories and recommend relevant changes. Big tech companies have also acknowledged the growing reliance on LLMs for code generation within their codebases. Although these advances significantly improve developer productivity, increasing reliance on automated code generation can proportionally increase the risk of suboptimal solutions and insecure code. Our work focuses on automatically sampling In-Context Learning (ICL) demonstrations which can improve model performance and enhance the interpretability of the generated code. Using AST-based analysis on outputs from the MBPP test set, we identify regions of code most influenced by the chosen demonstrations. In our experiments, we show that high-quality ICL demonstrations not only make outputs easier to interpret but also yield a positive performance improvement on the pass@10 metric. Conversely, poorly chosen ICL demonstrations affected the LLM performance on the pass@10 metric negatively compared to the base model. Overall, our approach highlights the importance of efficient sampling strategies for ICL, which can affect the performance of the model on any given task.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_25247
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Protocode: Prototype-Driven Interpretability for Code Generation in LLMs
Bodla, Krishna Vamshi
Yang, Haizhao
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Since the introduction of Large Language Models (LLMs), they have been widely adopted for various tasks such as text summarization, question answering, speech-to-text translation, and more. In recent times, the use of LLMs for code generation has gained significant attention, with tools such as Cursor and Windsurf demonstrating the ability to analyze massive code repositories and recommend relevant changes. Big tech companies have also acknowledged the growing reliance on LLMs for code generation within their codebases. Although these advances significantly improve developer productivity, increasing reliance on automated code generation can proportionally increase the risk of suboptimal solutions and insecure code. Our work focuses on automatically sampling In-Context Learning (ICL) demonstrations which can improve model performance and enhance the interpretability of the generated code. Using AST-based analysis on outputs from the MBPP test set, we identify regions of code most influenced by the chosen demonstrations. In our experiments, we show that high-quality ICL demonstrations not only make outputs easier to interpret but also yield a positive performance improvement on the pass@10 metric. Conversely, poorly chosen ICL demonstrations affected the LLM performance on the pass@10 metric negatively compared to the base model. Overall, our approach highlights the importance of efficient sampling strategies for ICL, which can affect the performance of the model on any given task.
title Protocode: Prototype-Driven Interpretability for Code Generation in LLMs
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25247