AgentX: Towards Agent-Driven Self-Iteration of Industrial Recommender Systems

Changxin Lao, Fei Pan, Guozhuang Ma, Han Li, Huihuang Lin, Jijun Shi, Kangzhi Zhao, Kun Gai, Mo Zhou, Qinqin Zhou, Quan Chen, Ruochen Yang, Shifu Bie, Shijie Yi, Shuang Yang, Shuo Yang, Wenhao Li, Wentao Xie, Xiao Lv, Xuming Wang, Yijun Wang, Yiming Chen, Yusheng Huang, Zhongyuan Wang, Zibo Zhao, Zijie Zhuang, Baoning Xia, Chao Liu, Chaoyi Ma, Chubo He, Dawei Cong, Feng Jiang, Gang Wang, Guilin Xia, Hanwen Xu, Jiahong Xie, Jiahui Qiao, Jian Liang, Jiangfan Yue, Jing Wang, Jinghan Yang, Jinghui Jia, Kan Qin, Lei Wang, Ming Li, Peilin Song, Pengbo Xu, Qiang Luo, Ruiming Tang, Shiyang Liu, Shuxian Jin, Tao Wang, Tao Zhang, Xiang Gao, Xianghan Li, Yingsong Luo, Yiwen Ning, Yongcheng Liu, Yueyang Liu, Yuan Guo, Zhaojie Liu, Zhenkai Cui

Recommendation algorithm iteration is moving from an artisanal, engineer-bound process toward an industrialized research loop, but this transition remains blocked by a structural execution bottleneck: the idea-to-launch cycle still depends on human engineers to generate hypotheses, modify production code, launch A/B experiments, and attribute online results. Innovation therefore scales linearly with headcount rather than compounding with evidence, compute, and accumulated experimental knowledge. We present AgentX, a production-deployed multi-agent system that fundamentally restructures this production function. AgentX operates as a self-evolving development engine: it autonomously generates, implements, evaluates, and learns from recommendation experiments at a scale and pace that no manual workflow can sustain. The system orchestrates four tightly coupled stages in a closed loop. A Brainstorm Agent synthesizes evidence from historical experiments, system architecture, data analysis, and external research into ranked, executable proposals. A Developing Agent translates each proposal into production-ready code through repository-grounded generation and multi-dimensional reliability verification. An Evaluation Agent conducts safe online rollout with guardrail-vetoed A/B judgment, converting both successes and failures into structured knowledge assets. A Harness Evolution layer (SGPO) then distills execution trajectories into semantic-gradient updates that continuously sharpen the agents themselves -- making the system not merely automated, but self-improving.