{"id":1089609,"date":"2024-10-02T07:18:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T14:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=1089609"},"modified":"2026-01-30T08:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:34:07","slug":"stackfeed","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/stackfeed\/","title":{"rendered":"STACKFEED: Structured Textual Actor-Critic Knowledge Base Editing with Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used for complex software engineering tasks but often generate incorrect or outdated code. Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems attempt to solve this by using external knowledge bases (KB) like API documentation, but in the fast-paced world of software development, this documentation itself quickly becomes outdated. To address this critical gap, we introduce STACKFEED, a novel Structured Textual Actor-Critic Knowledge base editing with FEEDback approach that iteratively refines documentation using feedback from oracles, such as compiler errors or test failures, via a multi-actor, centralized critic architecture. Each document in the KB is managed by a dedicated ReACT actor agent that performs structured edits based on targeted instructions from the critic. We demonstrate STACKFEED\u2019s effectiveness on challenging software engineering scenarios, including code generation for a low-resource language, outdated Python library documentation, and large-scale real-world repository migration using the MigrationBench benchmark. Our experiments show that STACKFEED significantly improves KB quality, leading to more accurate and reliable code generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used for complex software engineering tasks but often generate incorrect or outdated code. Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems attempt to solve this by using external knowledge bases (KB) like API documentation, but in the fast-paced world of software development, this documentation itself quickly becomes outdated. To address this critical gap, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2025 - Industry Track","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2025-9-22","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"https:\/\/2025.emnlp.org\/","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[246694,246685,250117],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1089609","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-artificial-intelligence","msr-field-of-study-machine-learning","msr-field-of-study-multi-agent-system"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2025-9-22","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/openreview.net\/forum?id=sHJodj4qN4","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-1.pdf","id":"1144254","title":"kbediting-1","label_id":"243112","label":0}],"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[{"id":1144254,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-1.pdf"},{"id":1093368,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/stackfeed-preprint-arxiv.pdf"},{"id":1093365,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-4.pdf"},{"id":1091157,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/stackfeed-preprint-6705918fb3b04.pdf"},{"id":1091154,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-3.pdf"},{"id":1091151,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/stackfeed-preprint.pdf"},{"id":1089621,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/maccafe-preprint.pdf"},{"id":1089618,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-3.pdf"},{"id":1089612,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KBEditing-Diag.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Naman Gupta","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Shashank Kirtania","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Priyanshu Gupta","user_id":42237,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Priyanshu Gupta"},{"type":"text","value":"Krishna Kariya","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sumit Gulwani","user_id":33755,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sumit Gulwani"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Arun Iyer","user_id":36299,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Arun Iyer"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Suresh Parthasarathy","user_id":33762,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Suresh Parthasarathy"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Arjun Radhakrishna","user_id":39405,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Arjun Radhakrishna"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sriram Rajamani","user_id":33711,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sriram Rajamani"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Gustavo Soares","user_id":39183,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Gustavo Soares"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199562],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[663303],"msr_project":[],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1089609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1089609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1150308,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1089609\/revisions\/1150308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1089609"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1089609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}