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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04188 |
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| _version_ | 1866910192719888384 |
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| author | Ibrahim, Ahmed F. |
| author_facet | Ibrahim, Ahmed F. |
| contents | Automatic software remodularisation is typically cast as a single-objective optimization problem. While recent metaheuristics have improved search efficiency, real-world architecture recovery must reconcile the conflicting attributes of structural cohesion and evolutionary stability. We reframe software module clustering as a distributed consensus problem among autonomous agents. We introduce an Asymmetric Monotonic Concession Protocol (AMCP) that enables agents to negotiate decompositions that respect multi-attribute utility thresholds. We formally prove the protocol's termination, its bounded concession behaviour consistent with the Zeuthen Strategy under closed-instance conditions, and the local Pareto-satisfactoriness of the resulting partitions. Preliminary experiments on a synthetic benchmark and the Xwork Java framework confirm that our negotiated consensus matches state-of-the-art optimizers when stability budgets are loose, while acting as a "circuit breaker" to enforce strict stability constraints. Extended results on ten further systems, including comparisons with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and multi-version chains, will be reported in a forthcoming full paper. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_04188 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A Multi-Agent Consensus Protocol for Stable Software Remodularization Ibrahim, Ahmed F. Software Engineering Automatic software remodularisation is typically cast as a single-objective optimization problem. While recent metaheuristics have improved search efficiency, real-world architecture recovery must reconcile the conflicting attributes of structural cohesion and evolutionary stability. We reframe software module clustering as a distributed consensus problem among autonomous agents. We introduce an Asymmetric Monotonic Concession Protocol (AMCP) that enables agents to negotiate decompositions that respect multi-attribute utility thresholds. We formally prove the protocol's termination, its bounded concession behaviour consistent with the Zeuthen Strategy under closed-instance conditions, and the local Pareto-satisfactoriness of the resulting partitions. Preliminary experiments on a synthetic benchmark and the Xwork Java framework confirm that our negotiated consensus matches state-of-the-art optimizers when stability budgets are loose, while acting as a "circuit breaker" to enforce strict stability constraints. Extended results on ten further systems, including comparisons with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and multi-version chains, will be reported in a forthcoming full paper. |
| title | A Multi-Agent Consensus Protocol for Stable Software Remodularization |
| topic | Software Engineering |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04188 |