Agentic Bayesian Optimization through Surrogate-Augmented Autoresearch
Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
Computer Science > Machine Learning
Title:Agentic Bayesian Optimization through Surrogate-Augmented Autoresearch
Abstract:Bayesian optimization (BO) has become the standard tool for sample-efficient optimization and owes its efficiency to uncertainty-aware search driven by generic statistical priors. Richer domain priors can improve BO in principle, but encoding them through tailored kernels or problem structure is difficult and rarely done in practice. LLMs can help sidestep this difficulty by making informal priors from natural language, code, and documentation directly available to the optimizer. However, existing LLM-based BO methods either insert the LLM into a fixed role (surrogate, acquisition proxy, or configuration interface) or hand it broad control, sacrificing the systematic exploration that makes BO reliable. We introduce agentic Bayesian optimization: a paradigm in which an LLM agent is the central decision maker in the BO loop while a Bayesian backend provides the uncertainty-aware optimization substrate. The agent configures the problem, queries the backend, selects and commits evaluations, and can revise the optimization strategy during the run by tightening bounds, switching acquisition functions, proposing targeted evaluations, or even reframing the problem following new instructions or observed evidence. We instantiate this idea in Sara, a surrogate-augmented autoresearch agent, and lenz, a modular BoTorch-based backend that the agent can inspect and modify through a structured interface. Across synthetic and real-world benchmarks, Sara preserves the reliability of state-of-the-art BO without prior knowledge, outperforms LLM-based baselines, and uses natural-language priors to improve beyond standard BO. We further demonstrate the practical value of agentic BO in dynamic settings, where Sara reconfigures the full optimization problem on the fly as requirements change, a capability not previously available in standard BO.
| Subjects: | Machine Learning (cs.LG); Machine Learning (stat.ML) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2608.00316 [cs.LG] |
| (or arXiv:2608.00316v1 [cs.LG] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.00316
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
|
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
Current browse context:
References & Citations
Bookmark
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
Demos
Recommenders and Search Tools
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.
More from arXiv — Machine Learning
-
LoKiFormer: Locality-aware Attention with Decoupled Knowledge Memory for Efficient Large Language Model Pretraining
Aug 14
-
Which Site, and When: A Free-Satellite-Data Test of Himalayan Glacial Lake Bursts, Landslides, and Ice Floods
Aug 14
-
MARCH: Scaling Recurrent Memory with Content-Routed State Anchors
Aug 14
-
Multi-AUV Ad-hoc network-based Target Tracking: A Value Gradient Guidance Multi-Agent Diffusion Reinforcement Learning Approach
Aug 14
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.