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The Rerun Reproduced Failure More Often Than It Repaired It

SymTrace replays multi-agent trajectories from intervention anchors to separate causal repair from lucky resampling.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-08-27-007
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Summary

SymTrace replays multi-agent trajectories from intervention anchors to separate causal repair from lucky resampling.

Across 536 human-annotated failures in three frameworks, unguided reruns reproduced failures 67.97 percent of the time but repaired only 6.90 percent. A symptom-driven intervention repaired 20.15 percent, a reported 191.89 percent improvement over the studied repair methods while still leaving most failures unresolved.

Why it matters

SymTrace replays multi-agent trajectories from intervention anchors to separate causal repair from lucky resampling.

Limits and context

  • Across 536 human-annotated failures in three frameworks, unguided reruns reproduced failures 67.97 percent of the time but repaired only 6.90 percent.

Key claims

  1. SymTrace replays multi-agent trajectories from intervention anchors to separate causal repair from lucky resampling.

    Qualification: Across 536 human-annotated failures in three frameworks, unguided reruns reproduced failures 67.97 percent of the time but repaired only 6.90 percent.

    Evidence: source-2026-08-27-007

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2608.25920arXiv · primary research

Corrections

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