Role-Aware Code Summaries Improve Cost-Effectiveness in LLM-Based Bug Localization

Jul 14, 2026

A new preprint demonstrates that using role-aware summaries as code representations can improve file-level bug localization performance by up to 40% in Hit@5 compared to file-path representations, while reducing storage requirements by 10-20x relative to raw source code. The study also shows that integrating these representations into the Agentless pipeline achieves 94% Hit@6, outperforming the baseline. The results highlight the importance of code representation choices for balancing accuracy and computational cost in LLM-driven software debugging.

Why it matters: This work identifies a practical approach to enhance both efficiency and effectiveness in LLM-based bug localization, which could directly benefit software development workflows.

Full story at: arXiv Software Engineering ↗