Do Agents Think Deeper? A Mechanistic Investigation of Layer-Wise Dynamics in Sequential Planning

arXiv:2605.27935v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent mechanistic studies suggest that large language models (LLMs) may utilize their depth inefficiently in standard single-turn tasks. Whether this still holds in autonomous agent settings, where models must perform multi-turn planning, tool use, and iterative state updates, remains unclear. We study this question through a systematic layer-wise analysis of complete user-agent trajectories spanning three domains: Deep Research, Code Generation, and Tabular Processing. Using residual stream probes, causal layer-skipping interventions, and effec

Source: arXiv cs.AI — read the full report at the original publisher.

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