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SWE-Protégé: Learning to Selectively Collaborate With an Expert Unlocks Small Language Models as Software Engineering Agents

Patrick Tser Jern Kon, Archana Pradeep, Ang Chen, Alexander P. Ellis, Warren Hunt, Zijian Wang, John Yang, Samuel Thompson · Feb 25, 2026 · Citations: 0

Automatic Metrics Coding Long Horizon
Open arXiv Find Implementation RSS feed Shortlist (0)

How to use this paper page

Coverage: Stale

Use this page to decide whether the paper is strong enough to influence an eval design. It summarizes the abstract plus available structured metadata. If the signal is thin, use it as background context and compare it against stronger hub pages before making protocol choices.

Best use

Background context only

Metadata: Stale

Trust level

Moderate

Signals: Stale

What still needs checking

No major weakness surfaced.

Signal confidence: 0.55

Abstract

Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates. We introduce SWE-Protégé, a post-training framework that reframes software repair as an expert-protégé collaboration problem. In SWE-Protégé, an SLM remains the sole decision-maker while learning to selectively seek guidance from a strong expert model, recognize stalled states, and follow through on expert feedback. Our approach combines supervised fine-tuning on expert-augmented trajectories with agentic reinforcement learning that explicitly discourages degenerative looping and unproductive expert collaboration. We lightly post-train Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct to achieve 42.4% Pass@1 on SWE-bench Verified, a +25.4% improvement over the prior SLM state of the art, while using expert assistance sparsely (~4 calls per task and 11% of total tokens).

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A benchmark-and-metrics comparison anchor.

Main weakness

No major weakness surfaced.

Trust level

Moderate

Eval-Fit Score

25/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

HFEPX Fit

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence: Moderate

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub Tool-Use Eval Hub

What This Page Found In The Paper

Each field below shows whether the signal looked explicit, partial, or missing in the available metadata. Use this to judge what is safe to trust directly and what still needs full-paper validation.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

Evidence snippet: Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Evaluation Modes

strong

Automatic Metrics

Confidence: Moderate Direct evidence

Includes extracted eval setup.

Evidence snippet: Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Benchmarks / Datasets

strong

SWE Bench, SWE Bench Verified

Confidence: Moderate Direct evidence

Useful for quick benchmark comparison.

Evidence snippet: Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Reported Metrics

strong

Pass@1, Latency, Cost

Confidence: Moderate Direct evidence

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

Evidence snippet: Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Rater Population

strong

Domain Experts

Confidence: Moderate Direct evidence

Helpful for staffing comparability.

Evidence snippet: We introduce SWE-Protégé, a post-training framework that reframes software repair as an expert-protégé collaboration problem.

Human Data Lens

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Unit of annotation: Unknown
  • Expertise required: Coding
  • Signal basis: Structured extraction plus abstract evidence.

Evaluation Lens

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: Long Horizon
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Signal confidence: 0.55
  • Known cautions: ambiguous

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

SWE-benchSWE-bench Verified

Reported Metrics

pass@1latencycost

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Small language models (SLMs) offer compelling advantages in cost, latency, and adaptability, but have so far lagged behind larger models on long-horizon software engineering tasks such as SWE-bench, where they suffer from pervasive action looping and low resolution rates.
  • We introduce SWE-Protégé, a post-training framework that reframes software repair as an expert-protégé collaboration problem.
  • In SWE-Protégé, an SLM remains the sole decision-maker while learning to selectively seek guidance from a strong expert model, recognize stalled states, and follow through on expert feedback.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against others mentioning SWE-bench.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Long-horizon tasks) against the full paper.
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We introduce SWE-Protégé, a post-training framework that reframes software repair as an expert-protégé collaboration problem.
  • Our approach combines supervised fine-tuning on expert-augmented trajectories with agentic reinforcement learning that explicitly discourages degenerative looping and unproductive expert collaboration.
  • We lightly post-train Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct to achieve 42.4% Pass@1 on SWE-bench Verified, a +25.4% improvement over the prior SLM state of the art, while using expert assistance sparsely (~4 calls per task and 11% of total tokens).

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Our approach combines supervised fine-tuning on expert-augmented trajectories with agentic reinforcement learning that explicitly discourages degenerative looping and unproductive expert collaboration.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Pass: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    Detected: SWE-bench, SWE-bench Verified

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: pass@1, latency, cost

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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