The Default Trap: Rethinking Plan Evaluation in Tool-Using LLM Agents
An executor can respond strongly to a change in a supplied plan's priority while showing a small change in the same information-selection probability when a default-aligned whole plan is removed. We call the risk of interpreting the latter as weak responsiveness to alternative priorities the default trap. We compare paired plans that prioritize different information targets with a shared no-plan reference. An accounting identity relates these distinct behavioral contrasts. Across 3,200 decision windows on 160 selected Retail, Airline, and AgentDojo tasks, switching priorities strongly redirects two models' choices, while the two plan-versus-default contrasts differ. In 2,160 additional wi...
| Authors | Xueqi Li, Jingjie Ning, Yibo Kong |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 29 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 29 September 2026 |
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