REVIEW 5 major objections 6 minor 124 references
Towards Conversational Development Environments: Using Theory-of-Mind and Multi-Agent Architectures for Requirements Refinement
T0 review · 5 major / 6 minor · reviewed 2026-08-07 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read Adding Theory-of-Mind helpers to a multi-agent system lets it extract richer, well-grounded software requirements through longer clarifying conversations.
desk verdict A well-designed multi-agent system for requirement refinement whose headline claim about accurately capturing stakeholder intents is not backed by any real stakeholder data. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The central object is AlignMind, a multi-agent architecture in which a Router, a Requirement Refiner, a Workflow Generator, and a Workflow Refiner are supported by Theory-of-Mind helper agents. The ToM helpers—a Topics & Questions Decomposer, an Expertise Estimator, and a Sentiment Detector—run after each user utterance and feed inferred mental states back to the Requirement Refiner, which then tailors its next single question. This decomposition of the refinement task across specialised agents is what the paper credits for the longer, more grounded conversations and richer outputs.
What would settle it
Give the same 150 scenarios to human software engineers and ask them to choose, blind, between AlignMind's and the baseline's requirements documents; if humans do not prefer AlignMind at a similar rate, or if the FM judges' scores correlate poorly with human preferences beyond the 20-scenario calibration set, the central claim fails. A more direct check is to score AlignMind outputs with a judge model whose family is completely disjoint from the models used to generate the outputs and see whether the quality gap survives.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The central claim is that adding Theory-of-Mind-style inference to a multi-agent architecture lets an FM-led system accurately capture stakeholder intents and convert them into both a detailed requirements document and an actionable step-by-step workflow. AlignMind's Router sends each query to a Requirement Refiner that asks one clarifying question at a time, guided by a Topics & Questions Decomposer plus Expertise and Sentiment helper agents; the refined requirements are then turned into a workflow by a separate generator, and a Workflow Refiner handles later edits. Compared with directly prompting one FM to refine requirements, AlignMind achieves statistically significant higher scores on five rubrics across three judge models, an eight-fold higher median lexical richness (266.5 vs 33 content words), and a median of 13 conversation rounds vs 4. The paper also reports that AlignMind's final requirements are grounded in the dialogue with no hallucination, and that the extra grounding costs a median of 74.5 FM calls and about 139,784 total tokens per task.
Load-bearing premise
The entire quality comparison rests on the assumption that the three-FM judge panel's rubric scores are a valid measure of how good refined requirements are; only 20 of the 150 scenarios were checked against human preferences (Cohen's kappa 0.685), so if the LLM judges favor AlignMind for reasons unrelated to real stakeholder value, the headline result would not generalize.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- If AlignMind's design is right, multi-agent refinement with ToM helpers is a practical way to turn vague stakeholder requests into complete, actionable requirements documents.
- Requirements produced this way are richer (about eight times more content words) and more grounded in what the user says, reducing the risk of hallucinated requirements.
- The workflow artifact doubles as a validation device: an unbuildable workflow signals gaps in the requirements.
- Because the cost is roughly 10.6 times the API calls and 30 times the tokens, organisations will need prompt caching, compression, or cheaper models to make such refinement affordable.
- The architecture is plug-and-play, so domain-specific ToM helpers can be added without changing the core refiner, opening the approach to non-software domains.
Reading between the lines
- The paper's own evaluation leaves open whether human stakeholders would perceive the same quality gap; a natural test is a blind human preference study on the same 150 scenarios, comparing AlignMind outputs with baseline outputs among real developers.
- Because some judge models share a model family with the generator, the claim would be stronger if the judge panel were fully disjoint from the models that produce the outputs—this is an extension the paper does not test.
- The cost figures suggest AlignMind's value proposition will improve over time as inference prices fall; the paper hints at this but does not model the crossover point where the richer requirements become clearly worth the extra tokens.
- The ToM helpers could be extended beyond expertise and sentiment to, say, risk tolerance or domain-specific regulatory knowledge; the paper frames the architecture as extensible but does not evaluate such extensions.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper presents AlignMind, an FM-powered multi-agent system for requirements refinement, augmented with theory-of-mind helper agents that estimate user expertise, sentiment, and topic coverage during multi-turn clarification dialogues. The system produces refined requirements and a natural-language workflow. The authors evaluate AlignMind against a single-FM baseline on 150 simulated scenarios using three FM judges, a lexical richness metric, conversation-round counts, a consistency/hallucination check, and cost measurements. They report significantly higher judge-assigned quality scores, roughly eight times higher lexical richness, longer conversations, comparable grounding, and a substantial cost overhead. The central claim is that AlignMind accurately captures stakeholder intents and requirements, with significantly higher output quality than direct prompting.
Significance. If the evaluation were fully validated, AlignMind would be a useful contribution to FM-based requirements engineering: it tackles a real phase (requirements refinement) that is under-addressed in the LLM4SE literature, and it combines multi-agent design with ToM-style helper agents in a concrete, extensible architecture. The paper's strengths include the detailed system description, the full set of prompts in the appendix (a reproducibility asset), the use of multiple judge models to mitigate self-preference, the iterative prototyping with six practitioners, and the explicit reporting of operational costs. The main weakness is that the evidence for the central claim is self-referential: simulated stakeholders, FM-generated rubrics, and FM judges from the same model families power the headline results, while the only human calibration covers 20 of 150 scenarios. The lexical richness result is also confounded with conversation length. These issues are load-bearing for the paper's main claim, so the current evidence supports a more limited reading: AlignMind outperforms a baseline under simulated conditions, according to LLM judges.
major comments (5)
- [Section 4.1 / RQ1.1] The central claim that AlignMind can 'accurately capture the intents and requirements of stakeholders' is not directly tested. All 150 evaluation scenarios use an FM role-playing as a human (prompt A.1.3) with FM-generated domains and intents, and the six human experts in Section 3.1 provided qualitative feedback on an early prototype, not ground-truth intents for these scenarios. The results therefore establish only that AlignMind outperforms a baseline when both interact with simulated stakeholders. To support the abstract's claim, the authors need either a human study with real stakeholders' intents (or a held-out set of real requirements) or a carefully qualified wording that restricts the conclusion to simulated settings.
- [Section 4 (RQ1.1), Table 1] The RQ1.1 quality comparison rests entirely on three FM judges from the same model families used to generate the artifacts and to derive the rubrics (GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, Llama3.3-70b; rubrics extracted in Appendix A.2.2). The only human calibration is a 20-scenario subset with Cohen's kappa of 0.685; this is a single agreement statistic and does not demonstrate that the judges are unbiased on the remaining 130 scenarios, nor that the FM-derived rubrics capture stakeholder-relevant quality rather than length or verbosity. A full human-judge validation on a larger sample, with per-rubric agreement, or an independent human evaluation of a random subset is needed before claiming 'significantly higher output quality.'
- [Section 4 (RQ1.2 and RQ1.3), Figures 9 and 10] The 8x lexical richness result (median 266.5 vs. 33 content words) is confounded with conversation length: AlignMind has a median of 13 rounds vs. 4 for the baseline, and 10.6x more FM calls. Longer conversations naturally produce more content words, so the 'requirement richness' metric is not an independent quality signal. The authors should report richness per round or per token, or otherwise control for output length, before claiming that AlignMind generates 'richer content' in the refined requirements.
- [Section 4 (RQ3)] The paper claims that AlignMind 'remains both cost-effective and efficient for requirements refinement tasks compared to manual requirement refinement' and cites absolute dollar amounts, but no manual baseline was measured in the study. The comparison to manual refinement is not part of the experimental design, and the reported $0.94-$31.40 figures do not include human effort, review time, or the cost of downstream errors caused by imperfect requirements. The authors should either remove this comparative claim or add an explicit human-effort baseline.
- [Section 4 (RQ2)] The hallucination/grounding check in RQ2 uses the same three FM judges from the same families as the RQ1 evaluation, and both systems achieve near-ceiling consistency scores (median 5/5). Given the self-referential evaluation setup, the conclusion that the generated requirements are 'grounded in dialogue' is not independently verified. Preference leakage or model-family bias could inflate consistency scores; a human-annotated consistency sample, or an external entailment-based metric, would provide stronger evidence for the no-hallucination claim.
minor comments (6)
- [Section 3.4.2] The text refers to the 'Topics & Decomposer Agent,' while Section 3.4.1 names the component 'Topics & Questions Decomposer Agent'; please unify the name.
- [Appendix A.1.1] The Domain Generator prompt contains the incomplete sentence 'Such domains involve creating automated workflows and should not include.' This appears truncated and should be completed or removed.
- [Figure 2] The box labeled 'X' among the ToM helper agents is never explained; please either label the placeholder explicitly or remove it.
- [Section 5] The sentence 'The flexibility provided by AlignMind plug-and-play architecture of AlignMind...' contains a duplicated phrase; please correct the wording.
- [General / Reproducibility] The paper does not state a data or code availability policy. Releasing the generated dialogues, judge prompts, and scoring scripts would substantially aid reproducibility and allow other researchers to assess the LLM-judge calibration concerns raised in the major comments.
- [References] Reference [9] is a non-archival blog post; consider replacing it with a peer-reviewed source for the claim that providing reasoning before scoring improves robustness.
Circularity Check
No circular derivation found; the FM-judge evaluation is anchored by a human-calibrated subset, so no central claim reduces to its own inputs by construction.
full rationale
The derivation chain is not circular under the required standard. AlignMind's central RQ1 claim is an empirical comparison against a baseline, measured by an FM judge panel using FM-derived rubrics; however, the paper independently calibrates that panel against human preferences on 20 scenarios with Cohen's kappa = 0.685 (Section 4.1), so the judge scores are not equivalent to the system's own outputs by construction. The rubrics themselves are generic quality criteria (intent identification, coverage, relevance, actionable workflow, realizability) and are manually reviewed in Section 6, not fitted parameters that force AlignMind to win. RQ2 applies a standard summarization consistency criterion to detect hallucinations, and RQ3 reports direct counts of calls and tokens; none of these metrics are defined in terms of the quantities they purport to predict. The use of FM-simulated stakeholders is an external-validity limitation rather than a circular step: it affects whether the result generalizes to real stakeholders, but it does not make the measured outcome equal to the input. Author self-citations [23,24] appear only in the discussion of costs and AI-native SE and are not load-bearing for the main result. No self-definitional, fitted-input, uniqueness-imported, or ansatz-via-citation pattern is present. I therefore find no significant circularity and assign score 0.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (1)
- questions per subtopic cutoff =
5
assumptions (4)
- domain assumption LLM judge scores correlate with human judgments of requirements quality
- domain assumption FM-as-human simulations adequately represent stakeholder behavior
- domain assumption Lexical richness is a valid proxy for requirement quality
- standard math Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Cliff's delta are appropriate for paired LLM-judge scores
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of Towards Conversational Development Environments: Using Theory-of-Mind and Multi-Agent Architectures for Requirements Refinement." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/SXG7HZRO
@misc{pith2026250520973,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: Towards Conversational Development Environments: Using Theory-of-Mind and Multi-Agent Architectures for Requirements Refinement},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/SXG7HZRO}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2505.20973}
}
read the original abstract
Foundation Models (FMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in various natural language tasks. However, their ability to accurately capture stakeholder requirements remains a significant challenge for using FMs for software development. This paper introduces a novel approach that leverages an FM-powered multi-agent system called AlignMind to address this issue. By having a cognitive architecture that enhances FMs with Theory-of-Mind capabilities, our approach considers the mental states and perspectives of software makers. This allows our solution to iteratively clarify the beliefs, desires, and intentions of stakeholders, translating these into a set of refined requirements and a corresponding actionable natural language workflow in the often-overlooked requirements refinement phase of software engineering, which is crucial after initial elicitation. Through a multifaceted evaluation covering 150 diverse use cases, we demonstrate that our approach can accurately capture the intents and requirements of stakeholders, articulating them as both specifications and a step-by-step plan of action. Our findings suggest that the potential for significant improvements in the software development process justifies these investments. Our work lays the groundwork for future innovation in building intent-first development environments, where software makers can seamlessly collaborate with AIs to create software that truly meets their needs.
Figures
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Reference graph
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The user
Topic 2 ... N. Topic n # Output: A.1.2 Intent Generator. , Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: August 2025. 30 Keheliya Gallaba, Ali Arabat, Dayi Lin, Mohammed Sayagh, and Ahmed E. Hassan You are a helpful assistant capable of completing an intent that users might want ...
2025
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[75]
The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can and gives as much information as is needed and no more.↩→
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[76]
The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.↩→
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[77]
The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.↩→
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[78]
USER" for the human developer and
The maxim of manner is when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.↩→ As the maxims stand, there may be an overlap, as regards the length of what one says, between the maxims of quantity and m...
2025
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[79]
Rubric - Represents the name of the rubric being scored
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[80]
Justification - Provide a justification of the conversation, requirements, and workflow with respect to each rubric.↩→
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[81]
rubrics": {
Label - The label can be one of the following options: Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree.↩→ - Provide a label for each rubric based on the justification step. <CONVERSATION> {{conversation}} </CONVERSATION> <REQUIREMENTS> {{requirement}} </REQUIREMENTS> ...
2025
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[82]
**Query:** The user's request or inquiry
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[83]
**Response:** The RequirementRefiner's response. , Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: August 2025. 38 Keheliya Gallaba, Ali Arabat, Dayi Lin, Mohammed Sayagh, and Ahmed E. Hassan
2025
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[84]
No requirements for now
**Requirements:** The current state of requirements, which can either be "No requirements for now" or a specific set of requirements.↩→
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[85]
No workflow for now
**Workflow:** The current state of the workflow, which can either be "No workflow for now" or a specific workflow process.↩→ Follow the instructions below to determine which agent to route the query to:
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[86]
If the query is answering the RequirementRefiner's response, about clarifying, or changing the requirements:↩→ - Route the query to the agent **RequirementRefiner**
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[87]
No requirements for now
If the query involves modifying the workflow: - Check the current state of the requirements: - If requirements have been produced (i.e., not "No requirements for now."): - Route the query to the agent **WorkflowRefiner**. - If requirements have not been produced: - Respond wit...
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[88]
I need to update the requirements for the project
**If the query does not pertain to modifying requirements or workflow:** - Respond with: **RequirementRefiner**. ### Example Scenarios: - **User Query:** "I need to update the requirements for the project." - **Route to:** "RequirementRefiner". - **User Query:** "Can we change...
2025
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[89]
Response: your response to the user
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[90]
No requirements for now
Requirements: the generated requirements, if they are ready. Otherwise, return "No requirements for now.".↩→
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[91]
No workflow for now
Workflow: the workflow required to achieve the generated requirements. Otherwise, return "No workflow for now.".↩→ Return a valid JSON conforming to the following TypeScript type definition without backticks or additional text:↩→ ``` { "response": string, "requirements": strin...
2025
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[92]
- Do not consider the following types of questions: * Off-topic questions; * Clarifying questions; * Seeking additional information; * Similar questions with different wordings
Answered Question - Determine whether the user's response answered your previous question. - Do not consider the following types of questions: * Off-topic questions; * Clarifying questions; * Seeking additional information; * Similar questions with different wordings. - Questi...
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[93]
Area Coverage - Explain your reasoning and progress within the current area of conversation. - Reason: evaluate if you have gathered enough information based on **exclusively** the user's previous responses on the current area.↩→ Always end your reasoning with whether you need...
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[94]
- Prompt the user for a response for unanswered questions only when covering the same area.↩→ - If the query is clear, provide an answer and a relevant follow-up question
Response - Keep your responses and questions focused on the current area. - Prompt the user for a response for unanswered questions only when covering the same area.↩→ - If the query is clear, provide an answer and a relevant follow-up question. - If the query is unclear, ask ...
-
[95]
last_answered_question
Current question - Extract from the response the question being currently asked. **The Area under investigation now is {{area}}**. ## Guidance Questions {{questions}} ## Feedback and Instructions about the User {{tom_helpers_sub_prompts}} # Output , Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Pu...
2025
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[96]
They should be separated by "\n".↩→ - You should include your adjustments according to the area consistency checker evaluations here.↩→
Response - Initially, you generate three possible sets of areas similar to the example provided above. They should be separated by "\n".↩→ - You should include your adjustments according to the area consistency checker evaluations here.↩→
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[97]
response
Final Area Set - Include the final area set here. <USER_INTENT> {{user_intent}} </USER_INTENT> Return a valid JSON conforming to the following TypeScript type definition without backticks:↩→ ``` { "response": string, "final_revised_area_set": string[] } ``` Output only valid J...
2025
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[98]
Analyze each area step by step
-
[99]
Determine a pool of key questions to achieve full coverage of each area
-
[100]
areas": {
For each area, select the most relevant questions (up to 5). Note that you can have more than three questions for each area. <USER_INTENT> {{user_intent}} </USER_INTENT> <AREAS> {{areas}} </AREAS> Return a valid JSON conforming to the following TypeScript type definition witho...
2025
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[101]
- Do the user's messages involve any references to prior expertise? yes/no
Answer these cue-related questions: - Do the user's messages involve any expressions of goodwill? yes/no. - Do the user's messages involve any references to prior expertise? yes/no. - Do the user's messages involve any organization of information? yes/no. - Do the user's messa...
-
[102]
- Long words count: {{long_words_count}}
Here are some metrics of the user's query that may help estimate their expertise: - Word count: {{words_count}}. - Long words count: {{long_words_count}}. - Negation count: {{negation_count}}
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[103]
Based on the answers above (1 and 2), provide comprehensive reasoning for categorizing the user's expertise level as Novice, Intermediate, or Expert.↩→
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[104]
reason": string,
Determine the expertise level that applies to the user. # Dialogue: {{dialogue}} Return a valid JSON conforming to the following TypeScript type definition without backticks:↩→ ``` { "reason": string, "expertise": string } ``` Output only valid JSON. Do **not** output any deli...
2025
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[105]
User visits a website
-
[106]
API call to fetch the user's browsing history
-
[107]
API call to a machine learning model to predict the user's interests based on their browsing history.↩→ , Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: August 2025. Towards Conversational Development Environments 47
2025
-
[108]
If a specific interest is identified, API call to fetch relevant advertisements; if not, API call to fetch↩→ general advertisements
-
[109]
Automated Job Application Workflow:
API call to display the fetched advertisements. Automated Job Application Workflow:
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[110]
User uploads their resume to a job search platform
-
[111]
API call to a machine learning model to extract skills and experience from the resume.↩→
-
[112]
API call to match the user with relevant job listings
-
[113]
For each matched job listing, make an API call to submit the user's application
-
[114]
Cyclic Weather Monitoring Workflow:
API call to notify the user of the application status for each job. Cyclic Weather Monitoring Workflow:
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[115]
The user sets up a routine weather check for their location
-
[116]
API call to fetch current weather data
-
[117]
If the weather condition is severe, API calls to alert the user
-
[118]
API call to a delay service to wait for a specified period (e.g., one hour)
-
[119]
Interactive Story Workflow:
Repeat the process from step 2. Interactive Story Workflow:
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[120]
The user starts an interactive story on an app
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[121]
API call to present the user with a story scenario and multiple choices
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[122]
The user makes a choice
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[123]
Depending on the user's choice, make an API call to fetch and present the next scenario.↩→
-
[124]
Requirements: {{ requirements_document }} Output: 1
Repeat the process from step 3 until the story ends. Requirements: {{ requirements_document }} Output: 1. Step 1. 2. Step 2. ... N. Step N. Ensure each step is clear, straightforward, and sequentially numbered, with API calls included. No leading/trailing titles or explanation...
2025
-
[2000]
IEEE Comput
(ECBS-00). IEEE Comput. Soc, 290–298. https://doi.org/10.1109/ecbs.2000.839888
2000
-
[2023]
In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA) (ICML’23)
Large language models can be easily distracted by irrelevant context. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA) (ICML’23). JMLR.org, Article 1291, 18 pages
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[2024]
In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE ’24)
Large Language Models are Few-Shot Summarizers: Multi-Intent Comment Generation via In-Context Learning. In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE ’24) . ACM, 1–13. https: //doi.org/10.1145/3597503.3608134
Reviewed August 7, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
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