Web Agents Should Adopt the Plan-Then-Execute Paradigm
ReAct has become the default architecture across LLM agents, and many existing web agents follow this paradigm. We argue that it is the wrong default for web agents. Instead, web agents should default to plan-then-execute: commit to a task-specific program before observing runtime web content, then execute it. The reason is that web content mixes inputs from many parties. An e-commerce product page may combine a seller's listing, customer reviews and sponsored advertisements. Under ReAct, all of this content flows into the model when deciding on the next action, creating a direct path for prompt injections to steer the agent's control flow. Plan-then-execute changes this boundary: untrust...
| Authors | Julien Piet, Annabella Chow, Yiwei Hou et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 14 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 14 May 2026 |
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