Self-Manager: Parallel Agent Loop for Long-form Deep Research

ACL ARR 2026 January Submission10576 Authors

Keywords: Deep Research, Agent, Information Retrieval

Abstract: Long-form deep research requires multi-faceted investigations over extended horizons to get a comprehensive report. When handling such complex tasks, existing agents manage context at the subtask level to overcome linear context accumulation and information loss. However, they still adhere to a single context window and sequential execution paradigm, which results in mutual interference and blocking behavior, restricting scalability and adaptability. To address this issue, this paper introduces Self-Manager, a parallel agent loop that enables asynchronous and concurrent execution. The main thread can create multiple subthreads, each with its own isolated context, and manage them iteratively through Thread Control Blocks, allowing for more focused and flexible parallel agent execution. To assess its effectiveness, we benchmark Self-Manager on DeepResearch Bench, where it consistently outperforms existing single-agent loop baselines across all metrics. Furthermore, we conduct extensive analytical experiments to demonstrate the necessity of Self-Manager’s design choices, as well as its advantages in contextual capacity, efficiency, and generalization.

Paper Type: Long

Research Area: AI/LLM Agents

Research Area Keywords: LLM agents, autonomous agents, tool use

Contribution Types: Publicly available software and/or pre-trained models

Languages Studied: English, Chinese

Submission Number: 10576