AIware 2026
Mon 6 - Tue 7 July 2026 Montreal, Canada
co-located with FSE 2026

This program is tentative and subject to change.

In the past years, large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable progress in code generation. However, their ability to reason about program behavior remains an open challenge - an ability that is relevant for applications including reverse engineering, debugging, secure code generation, test-driven synthesis, input reconstruction, reverse fuzzing, behavioral monitoring, and safe execution modeling.

To study this ability, we examine the capacity of LLMs to reason about the semantics of code - specifically, their ability to \emph{relate} code, its inputs, and its outputs to each other. To this end, we investigate whether and how well LLMs can predict one of these three components given the other two - that is,

  1. predict the input given code and output,
  2. predict the output given code and input, and
  3. predict the code given input and output.

This way, we assess how well LLMs can reason about and understand the underlying relationships that govern program execution.

We construct four datasets covering string processing, array operations, and coding challenges in JavaScript and Python to evaluate diverse program-understanding capabilities, incorporating various code mutation techniques to increase complexity.

In our evaluation on tasks covering string processing, array operations, and coding challenges, we find that closed-weight models achieve the strongest performance across all datasets, including perfect input recovery on deterministic string tasks. Across tasks, output prediction is comparatively stable, whereas code prediction remains the hardest setting and often fails for smaller models. Finally, cross-codebase transfer is feasible, especially for input prediction, but highly sensitive to model capacity and fine-tuning strategy.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Mon 6 Jul

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

08:50 - 10:30
Coding Agents, Software Testing, and Code UnderstandingArXiv Track / Main Track at MB 1.210
08:50
5m
Talk
Collaborator or Assistant? How AI Coding Agents Partition Work Across Pull Request Lifecycles
Main Track
Young Jo Chung , Safwat Hassan University of Toronto
08:55
5m
Talk
When Code Authors Are Agents: A Large-Scale Study of Human–Agent Collaboration in Pull Requests
Main Track
Anthonia Oluchukwu Njoku École Polytechnique de Montréal, Université de Montréal, CA, Zohreh Sharafi Polytechnique Montréal, Foutse Khomh Polytechnique Montréal
09:00
5m
Talk
Understanding Conversational Patterns in Multi-Agent Programming: A Case Study On Fibonacci Game Development
Main Track
Srijita Basu Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, Viktor Kjellberg Göteborg University, SE, Simin Sun , Bengt Haraldsson Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, Scania CV AB, Md Abu Ahammed Babu Volvo Cars AB, Wilhelm Meding Ericsson, Farnaz Fotrousi Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, Miroslaw Staron Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg
09:05
5m
Talk
Recovering from Misbehaviors in Coding Agents
Main Track
Rahul Nanda Facebook, US, Chandra Maddila Meta Platforms, Inc., Smriti Jha Facebook, US, Euna Mehnaz Khan , Satish Chandra Meta Platforms, Inc., Matteo Paltenghi University of Stuttgart
09:10
5m
Talk
Configuring Agentic AI Coding Tools: An Exploratory Study
Main Track
Matthias Galster University of Canterbury, Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi Heidelberg University, Jai Lal Lulla Singapore Management University, Muhammad Auwal Abubakar Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg, DE, Christoph Treude Singapore Management University, Sebastian Baltes Heidelberg University
Pre-print
09:15
5m
Talk
Execution Control Matters: Deterministic and Agentic Tool Orchestration for LLM-Based Code Translation
Main Track
Naing Oo Lwin Bucknell University, US, Rajesh Kumar Bucknell University, US
09:20
5m
Talk
Developer Experience with AI Coding Agents: HTTP Behavioral Signatures in Documentation Portals
ArXiv Track
Oleksii Borysenko Cisco DevNet
09:25
5m
Talk
VISOR: A Vision-Language Model-based Test Oracle for Testing Robots
Main Track
Prasun Saurabh Simula Research Laboratory, NO, Pablo Valle Mondragon University, Aitor Arrieta Mondragon University, Shaukat Ali Simula Research Laboratory and Oslo Metropolitan University, Paolo Arcaini National Institute of Informatics
09:30
5m
Talk
Fixpad++: Automated Bug Fix Verification Using LLM Agents
Main Track
Mustafa Özkan İr Bilkent University, Bilkent University, TR, Mehmet Dedeler Bilkent University, Bilkent University, TR, Anil Koyuncu Bilkent University, Eray Tüzün Bilkent University
09:35
5m
Talk
Co-Located Tests, Better AI Code: How Test Syntax Structure Affects Foundation Model Code Generation
Main Track
Éric Jacopin Cosmic AI, FR
09:40
5m
Talk
Examining LLMs Ability to Summarize Code Through Mutation-Analysis
Main Track
Lara Khatib University of Waterloo, Michael Pu University of Waterloo, Bogdan Vasilescu Carnegie Mellon University, Mei Nagappan University of Waterloo
09:45
5m
Talk
Testing AIware Systems: A Software Engineering Survey
Main Track
Karla Gonzalez Royal Military College of Canada, Mariam El Mezouar Royal Military College
09:50
5m
Talk
TestMap: Evidence Infrastructure for Foundation-Model-Assisted Test Generation
ArXiv Track
Hunter Leary Virginia Tech, Luke Hanuska Virginia Tech, Chris Brown Virginia Tech
09:55
5m
Talk
Metamorphic Testing for Clinical ML Models: A Framework Proposal and Pilot Study
ArXiv Track
Jie JW Wu Michigan Technological University, USA, Feiyu E Michigan Technological University, USA, Bo Chen Michigan Technological University, USA
10:00
5m
Talk
An Empirical Study of Reasoning Steps in Thinking Code LLMs
Main Track
Haoran Xue York University, CA, Gias Uddin York University, Canada, Song Wang York University
10:05
5m
Talk
Can LLMs really reason about Code? Studying how well LLMs understand the relation between Input, Code, and Output
Main Track
Norman Becker CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, DE, Tural Mammadov CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Andreas Zeller CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
10:10
5m
Talk
How Robustly do LLMs Understand Execution Semantics?
Main Track
Claudio Spiess University of California, Davis, Premkumar Devanbu UC Davis, Earl T. Barr University College London
10:15
5m
Talk
Program-as-Weights: A Programming Paradigm for Fuzzy Functions
ArXiv Track
Wentao Zhang University of Waterloo, Liliana Hotsko University of Waterloo, Woojeong Kim Cornell University, Pengyu Nie University of Waterloo, Stuart Shieber Harvard University, Yuntian Deng University of Waterloo
10:20
10m
Live Q&A
Joint Q&A and Discussion
Main Track