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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.02244 |
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| _version_ | 1866918480092069888 |
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| author | Kim, Yelin |
| author_facet | Kim, Yelin |
| contents | Frontier software engineering agents have saturated short-horizon benchmarks while regressing on the work that constitutes senior engineering: long-horizon, multi-engineer, ambiguous-specification deliverables. This paper takes a position on what training data is needed to close the gap. The substrate for the next generation of SWE agents is neither larger GitHub scrapes nor more solo-agent trajectories nor -- sufficient by itself -- open human-AI dialogue logs. It is triadic data: synchronized capture of the human-human conversations where engineering context is formed, the human-AI sessions where that context is partially consumed, and the multi-week cross-functional work that surrounds both. We argue that the canonical instantiation of triadic data is two complementary products: long-horizon expert trajectories captured under stimulated-recall protocols, and simulated cross-functional companies -- instrumented teams of senior engineers, product managers, designers, and data scientists working through ambiguous deliverables on shared infrastructure. We further specify a four-tier evidence framework through which any such corpus -- triadic or otherwise -- must justify its quality to a fine-tuning researcher: mechanical verification, statistical corpus characterization, probe experiments, and pre-registered blind evaluation. We argue that this data is capturable in 12-18 months with methods already mature in adjacent fields, that it is the empirical key to four open questions in agent training, and that the field's near-term research agenda should include it explicitly. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_02244 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Conversations Beneath the Code: Triadic Data for Long-Horizon Software Engineering Agents Kim, Yelin Software Engineering Artificial Intelligence Frontier software engineering agents have saturated short-horizon benchmarks while regressing on the work that constitutes senior engineering: long-horizon, multi-engineer, ambiguous-specification deliverables. This paper takes a position on what training data is needed to close the gap. The substrate for the next generation of SWE agents is neither larger GitHub scrapes nor more solo-agent trajectories nor -- sufficient by itself -- open human-AI dialogue logs. It is triadic data: synchronized capture of the human-human conversations where engineering context is formed, the human-AI sessions where that context is partially consumed, and the multi-week cross-functional work that surrounds both. We argue that the canonical instantiation of triadic data is two complementary products: long-horizon expert trajectories captured under stimulated-recall protocols, and simulated cross-functional companies -- instrumented teams of senior engineers, product managers, designers, and data scientists working through ambiguous deliverables on shared infrastructure. We further specify a four-tier evidence framework through which any such corpus -- triadic or otherwise -- must justify its quality to a fine-tuning researcher: mechanical verification, statistical corpus characterization, probe experiments, and pre-registered blind evaluation. We argue that this data is capturable in 12-18 months with methods already mature in adjacent fields, that it is the empirical key to four open questions in agent training, and that the field's near-term research agenda should include it explicitly. |
| title | The Conversations Beneath the Code: Triadic Data for Long-Horizon Software Engineering Agents |
| topic | Software Engineering Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.02244 |