Coding-Agent Benchmarks Should Match Their Users' Task Flows - The JetBrains Blog

JetBrains Research argues that coding-agent benchmarks should reflect the task flows of specific user populations rather than treat issue-based bug-fix and feature tasks as universally representative. Analysis of 4,782 IDE agent sessions found that developers frequently ask for explanations, planning, reviews, refactoring, debugging, and command execution alongside change requests, whereas SWE-Bench Pro consists almost entirely of single-message feature and bug-fix tasks. To address this gap, the researchers introduce SWE-TaskFlow, a method that preserves existing benchmark repositories, tests, and requirements while splitting issues into sequential requests and inserting verifiable repository questions, then selecting message sequences that align with observed session lengths, intents, and transitions. Applied to 700 SWE-Bench Pro tasks, the approach improved alignment with long production sessions and enabled intermediate evaluation checkpoints. Pilot experiments across four models showed that sequentially revealing requirements substantially increased cost while producing only modest changes in resolve rates, and added questions imposed further overhead while measuring repository-question accuracy. The authors note that the method does not yet model many real interactions or reactive user feedback, but position it as a reusable framework for calibrating benchmarks to declared target workflows.

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