Where Should the Evaluation Budget Go in LLM-Driven Agent Scaffold Evolution?
TL;DR
This work proposes \method, an evaluation allocation framework that combines sparse search-time feedback with targeted final confirmation and achieves higher mean performance than full evaluation in most settings while using approximately half as many evaluation cells.
Abstract
Large language model (LLM)-driven agent scaffold evolution improves agent workflows through iterative candidate generation and evaluation. Evaluation both guides subsequent search and determines the final scaffold, but evaluating every candidate on the full task set incurs substantial execution costs. We investigate how evaluation budgets can be allocated across these two roles. Our experiments show that sparse feedback can sustain productive evolution, while additional targeted evaluation improves final selection. Replay analyses further show that shared informative items and a common scoring reference support comparisons among closely matched candidates. Motivated by these findings, we propose \method, an evaluation allocation framework that combines sparse search-time feedback with targeted final confirmation. A short fully evaluated warm-up establishes a shared informative core and calibrates a response model whose item parameters remain fixed during search. After search, \method refits the model and applies paired successive halving, reusing accumulated observations and executing only missing evaluations. Across four benchmarks and two evolution frameworks, \method achieves higher mean performance than full evaluation in most settings while using approximately half as many evaluation cells.
