Interactive Recommendation Agent with Active User Commands

Jiakai Tang; Yujie Luo; Xunke Xi; Fei Sun; Xueyang Feng; Sunhao Dai; Chao Yi; Dian Chen; Zhujin Gao; Yang Li; Xu Chen; Wen Chen; Jian Wu; Yuning Jiang; Bo Zheng

arXiv · 2509.21317

Interactive Recommendation Agent with Active User Commands

Jiakai Tang·Yujie Luo·Xunke Xi·Fei Sun·Xueyang Feng·Sunhao Dai·Chao Yi·Dian Chen·Zhujin Gao·Yang Li·Xu Chen·Wen Chen·Jian Wu·Yuning Jiang·Bo Zheng

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Abstract

Traditional recommender systems rely on passive feedback mechanisms that limit users to simple choices such as like and dislike. However, these coarse-grained signals fail to capture users' nuanced behavior motivations and intentions. In turn, current systems cannot also distinguish which specific item attributes drive user satisfaction or dissatisfaction, resulting in inaccurate preference modeling. These fundamental limitations create a persistent gap between user intentions and system interpretations, ultimately undermining user satisfaction and harming system effectiveness. To address these limitations, we introduce the Interactive Recommendation Feed (IRF), a pioneering paradigm that enables natural language commands within mainstream recommendation feeds. Unlike traditional systems that confine users to passive implicit behavioral influence, IRF empowers active explicit control over recommendation policies through real-time linguistic commands. To support this paradigm, we develop RecBot, a dual-agent architecture where a Parser Agent transforms linguistic expressions into structured preferences and a Planner Agent dynamically orchestrates adaptive tool chains for on-the-fly policy adjustment. To enable practical deployment, we employ simulation-augmented knowledge distillation to achieve efficient performance while maintaining strong reasoning capabilities. Through extensive offline and long-term online experiments, RecBot shows significant improvements in both user satisfaction and business outcomes.

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Jiakai Tang, Yujie Luo, Xunke Xi, Fei Sun, Xueyang Feng, Sunhao Dai, Chao Yi, Dian Chen, Zhujin Gao, Yang Li, Xu Chen, Wen Chen, Jian Wu, Yuning Jiang, Bo Zheng. 2025-09-25. Interactive Recommendation Agent with Active User Commands. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21317

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