paperMay 2026Unreviewed

No More, No Less: Task Alignment in Terminal Agents

Sina Mavali, David Pape, Jonathan Evertz, Samira Abedini, Devansh Srivastav, Thorsten Eisenhofer, Sahar Abdelnabi, Lea Schönherr

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Abstract

Terminal agents are increasingly capable of executing complex, long-horizon tasks autonomously from a single user prompt. To do so, they must interpret instructions encountered in the environment (e.g., README files, code comments, stack traces) and determine their relevance to the task. This creates a fundamental challenge: relevant cues must be followed to complete a task, whereas irrelevant or misleading ones must be ignored. Existing benchmarks do not capture this ability. An agent may appea

Cite

@misc{mavali2026no,
  title = {{No More, No Less: Task Alignment in Terminal Agents}},
  author = {Sina Mavali and David Pape and Jonathan Evertz and Samira Abedini and Devansh Srivastav and Thorsten Eisenhofer and Sahar Abdelnabi and Lea Schönherr},
  year = {2026},
  month = may,
  eprint = {2605.12233},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12233}
}