Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench: Testing the Limits of Agents on Long-Horizon Terminal Tasks with Dense Reward-Based Grading

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benchmark agents long-horizon terminal-tasks dense-reward evaluation ai

Summary

Introduces Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench, a benchmark of 46 long-horizon terminal tasks with dense reward-based grading, evaluating AI agents on planning, long-context, and debugging. Even the strongest model achieves only 15.2% pass@1, showing significant room for improvement.

AI agents have become capable of autonomously completing short, well-specified tasks. However, existing terminal benchmarks largely focus on simple problems that finish within minutes and are evaluated only by their final outcome. This setup overlooks intermediate progress and partial solutions, yielding sparse reward signals and an incomplete picture of agent capability. We introduce Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench, a terminal benchmark of 46 long-horizon tasks spanning nine categories, including experiment reproduction, software engineering, multimodal analysis, interactive games, and scientific computing. Each task follows a Terminal-Bench-style setup with a reference solution or simulation engine, but is further decomposed into fine-grained graded subtasks. This design enables dense intermediate rewards and partial credit, allowing evaluation to capture not only whether an agent reaches the final goal, but also how far it progresses on open-ended workflows. Tasks in Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench typically require hundreds of episodes and minutes to hours of execution, stressing long-horizon planning, long-context management, and iterative debugging rather than one-shot problem solving. We evaluate 15 frontier models and find that agents consume on average 9.9M tokens per task, with roughly 231 episodes and 85.3 minutes of execution time per run, making Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench more demanding than prior terminal-based benchmarks. Even the strongest tested model achieves 15.2% pass@1 at a partial-reward threshold of 0.95 and 10.9% at a perfect-reward threshold of 1.0, while the mean pass rate across models is 4.3% and 1.7% under the two thresholds, respectively. These results reveal headroom for improvement. We further analyze failure modes and error patterns, and release Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench to support future progress on long-horizon terminal agents.
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Source: https://huggingface.co/papers/2607.08964 Published on Jul 9

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Abstract

AIagentshavebecomecapableofautonomouslycompletingshort,well-specifiedtasks.However,existingterminalbenchmarkslargelyfocusonsimpleproblemsthatfinishwithinminutesandareevaluatedonlybytheirfinaloutcome.Thissetupoverlooksintermediateprogressandpartialsolutions,yieldingsparserewardsignalsandanincompletepictureofagentcapability.WeintroduceLong-Horizon-Terminal-Bench,aterminalbenchmarkof46long-horizontasksspanningninecategories,includingexperimentreproduction,softwareengineering,multimodalanalysis,interactivegames,andscientificcomputing.EachtaskfollowsaTerminal-Bench-stylesetupwithareferencesolutionorsimulationengine,butisfurtherdecomposedintofine-grainedgradedsubtasks.Thisdesignenablesdenseintermediaterewardsandpartialcredit,allowingevaluationtocapturenotonlywhetheranagentreachesthefinalgoal,butalsohowfaritprogressesonopen-endedworkflows.TasksinLong-Horizon-Terminal-Benchtypicallyrequirehundredsofepisodesandminutestohoursofexecution,stressinglong-horizonplanning,long-contextmanagement,anditerativedebuggingratherthanone-shotproblemsolving.Weevaluate15frontiermodelsandfindthatagentsconsumeonaverage9.9Mtokenspertask,withroughly231episodesand85.3minutesofexecutiontimeperrun,makingLong-Horizon-Terminal-Benchmoredemandingthanpriorterminal-basedbenchmarks.Eventhestrongesttestedmodelachieves15.2%[email protected]%ataperfect-rewardthresholdof1.0,whilethemeanpassrateacrossmodelsis4.3%and1.7%underthetwothresholds,respectively.Theseresultsrevealheadroomforimprovement.Wefurtheranalyzefailuremodesanderrorpatterns,andreleaseLong-Horizon-Terminal-Benchtosupportfutureprogressonlong-horizonterminalagents.

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