--- title: "Beyond Individual Intelligence: Surveying Collaboration, Failure Attribution, and Self-Evolution in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems" source: HuggingFace Daily Papers · 2026-05-17 url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14892 date: 2026-05-18 published_at: 2026-05-17T12:00:00+00:00 tag: 论文研究 item_id: b8b7687e45db04b9 --- # Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 14 May 2026 ( [v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14892v1)), last revised 15 May 2026 (this version, v2)]# Title:Beyond Individual Intelligence: Surveying Collaboration, Failure Attribution, and Self-Evolution in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems [View PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.14892) Abstract:LLM-based autonomous agents have demonstrated strong capabilities in reasoning, planning, and tool use, yet remain limited when tasks require sustained coordination across roles, tools, and environments. Multi-agent systems address this through structured collaboration among specialized agents, but tighter coordination also amplifies a less explored risk: errors can propagate across agents and interaction rounds, producing failures that are difficult to diagnose and rarely translate into structural self-improvement. Existing surveys cover individual agent capabilities, multi-agent collaboration, or agent self-evolution separately, leaving the causal dependencies among them unexamined. This survey provides a unified review organized around four causally linked stages, which we term the LIFE progression: Lay the capability foundation, Integrate agents through collaboration, Find faults through attribution, and Evolve through autonomous self-improvement. For each stage, we provide systematic taxonomies and formally characterize the dependencies between adjacent stages, revealing how each stage both depends on and constrains the next. Beyond synthesizing existing work, we identify open challenges at stage boundaries and propose a cross-stage research agenda for closed-loop multi-agent systems capable of continuously diagnosing failures, reorganizing structures, and refining agent behaviors, extending current coordination frameworks toward more self-organizing forms of collective intelligence. By bridging these previously fragmented research threads, this survey aims to offer both a systematic reference and a conceptual roadmap toward autonomous, self-improving multi-agent intelligence. ## Submission history From: Jie Ma [[view email](https://arxiv.org/show-email/609af0d8/2605.14892)] **Thu, 14 May 2026 14:36:13 UTC (16,995 KB)** [[v1]](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14892v1)**[v2]**Fri, 15 May 2026 09:12:41 UTC (16,995 KB) ### References & Citations Loading... # Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer *(*[What is the Explorer?](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html#arxiv-bibliographic-explorer)) Connected Papers *(*[What is Connected Papers?](https://www.connectedpapers.com/about)) Litmaps *(*[What is Litmaps?](https://www.litmaps.co/)) scite Smart Citations *(*[What are Smart Citations?](https://www.scite.ai/))# Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv *(*[What is alphaXiv?](https://alphaxiv.org/)) CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers *(*[What is CatalyzeX?](https://www.catalyzex.com)) DagsHub *(*[What is DagsHub?](https://dagshub.com/)) Gotit.pub *(*[What is GotitPub?](http://gotit.pub/faq)) Hugging Face *(*[What is Huggingface?](https://huggingface.co/huggingface)) ScienceCast *(*[What is ScienceCast?](https://sciencecast.org/welcome))# Demos # Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower *(*[What are Influence Flowers?](https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/)) CORE Recommender *(*[What is CORE?](https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender))# arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? [ Learn more about arXivLabs](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html).