{"ID":2877260,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20931","arxiv_id":"2508.20931","title":"How Can Input Reformulation Improve Tool Usage Accuracy in a Complex Dynamic Environment? A Study on $τ$-bench","abstract":"Recent advances in reasoning and planning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have enabled their potential as autonomous agents capable of tool use in dynamic environments. However, in multi-turn conversational environments like $τ$-bench, these agents often struggle with consistent reasoning, adherence to domain-specific policies, and extracting correct information over a long horizon of tool-calls and conversation. To capture and mitigate these failures, we conduct a comprehensive manual analysis of the common errors occurring in the conversation trajectories. We then experiment with reformulations of inputs to the tool-calling agent for improvement in agent decision making. Finally, we propose the Input-Reformulation Multi-Agent (IRMA) framework, which automatically reformulates user queries augmented with relevant domain rules and tool suggestions for the tool-calling agent to focus on. The results show that IRMA significantly outperforms ReAct, Function Calling, and Self-Reflection by 16.1%, 12.7%, and 19.1%, respectively, in overall pass^5 scores. These findings highlight the superior reliability and consistency of IRMA compared to other methods in dynamic environments.","short_abstract":"Recent advances in reasoning and planning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have enabled their potential as autonomous agents capable of tool use in dynamic environments. However, in multi-turn conversational environments like $τ$-bench, these agents often struggle with consistent reasoning, adherence to dom...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20931","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.20931v2","authors":"[\"Venkatesh Mishra\",\"Amir Saeidi\",\"Satyam Raj\",\"Mutsumi Nakamura\",\"Jayanth Srinivasa\",\"Gaowen Liu\",\"Ali Payani\",\"Chitta Baral\"]","published":"2025-08-28T15:57:33Z","proceeding":"cs.CL","tasks":"[\"cs.CL\"]","methods":"[\"Large Language Model\",\"Language Model\"]","has_code":false}