An Interactive Paradigm for Deep Research

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ai, Lin, Bursztyn, Victor S., Chen, Xiang, Hirschberg, Julia, Mitra, Saayan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917526765568000
author Ai, Lin
Bursztyn, Victor S.
Chen, Xiang
Hirschberg, Julia
Mitra, Saayan
author_facet Ai, Lin
Bursztyn, Victor S.
Chen, Xiang
Hirschberg, Julia
Mitra, Saayan
contents Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled deep research systems that synthesize comprehensive, report-style answers to open-ended queries by combining retrieval, reasoning, and generation. Yet most frameworks rely on rigid workflows with one-shot scoping and long autonomous runs, offering little room for course correction if user intent shifts mid-process. We present SteER, a framework for Steerable deEp Research that introduces interpretable, mid-process control into long-horizon research workflows. At each decision point, SteER uses a cost-benefit formulation to determine whether to pause for user input or to proceed autonomously. It combines diversity-aware planning with utility signals that reward alignment, novelty, and coverage, and maintains a live persona model that evolves throughout the session. SteER outperforms state-of-the-art open-source and proprietary baselines by up to 22.80\% on alignment, leads on quality metrics such as breadth and balance, and is preferred by human readers in 85\%+ of pairwise alignment judgments. We also introduce a persona-query benchmark and data-generation pipeline. To our knowledge, this is the first work to advance deep research with an interactive, interpretable control paradigm, paving the way for controllable, user-aligned agents in long-form tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_24266
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Interactive Paradigm for Deep Research
Ai, Lin
Bursztyn, Victor S.
Chen, Xiang
Hirschberg, Julia
Mitra, Saayan
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled deep research systems that synthesize comprehensive, report-style answers to open-ended queries by combining retrieval, reasoning, and generation. Yet most frameworks rely on rigid workflows with one-shot scoping and long autonomous runs, offering little room for course correction if user intent shifts mid-process. We present SteER, a framework for Steerable deEp Research that introduces interpretable, mid-process control into long-horizon research workflows. At each decision point, SteER uses a cost-benefit formulation to determine whether to pause for user input or to proceed autonomously. It combines diversity-aware planning with utility signals that reward alignment, novelty, and coverage, and maintains a live persona model that evolves throughout the session. SteER outperforms state-of-the-art open-source and proprietary baselines by up to 22.80\% on alignment, leads on quality metrics such as breadth and balance, and is preferred by human readers in 85\%+ of pairwise alignment judgments. We also introduce a persona-query benchmark and data-generation pipeline. To our knowledge, this is the first work to advance deep research with an interactive, interpretable control paradigm, paving the way for controllable, user-aligned agents in long-form tasks.
title An Interactive Paradigm for Deep Research
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24266