TEX: Test-Time Scaling Testing Agents via Execution-based Cross-Validation

arXiv:2610.27290 · cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.LG · Submitted 2026-10-19 · Read on arXiv

cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.LG

Submitted: 2026-10-19

Updated: 2026-10-19

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Test-case generation is critical but remains challenging for language models.

Terminology

Abstract

Test-case generation is critical but remains challenging for language models. Existing test-time scaling methods either isolate candidates or aggregate traces, which do not scale to long-horizon tasks. We present TEX, a collaborative test-time scaling framework based on execution-driven cross-validation. TEX parallelizes agents to generate tests and patches, cross-executing each test against every patch to form a K times K feedback matrix. Agents use their matrix slices for refinement, enabling objective validation without verbose trace sharing. On SWT-Bench Verified, TEX achieves 86.4%, establishing a new state-of-the-art and improving +9.0% over single-agent baselines. Moreover, even random selection from TEX outputs (84.4%) surpasses the previous SOTA (84.0%), showing collaborative execution feedback improves solution quality, not just best-case samples. Our results highlight execution-grounded feedback as an effective scaling mechanism for long-horizon agentic tasks.

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