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arXiv · 2607.15948

TARS: A Theory-of-Mind Agent for Personalized In-IDE Code Comprehension

Leopoldo Todisco·Antonio Della Porta·Stefano Lambiase·Fabio Palomba
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Abstract

Code comprehension is one of the most time-consuming tasks in software engineering, yet most LLM-based assistants produce explanations that ignore who is asking and force developers into a disruptive copy-paste workflow. We present TARS, an LLM-powered agent integrated into Visual Studio Code that supports program comprehension through autonomous explanations anchored directly to the code under analysis. Built around a lightweight Theory of Mind paradigm, TARS profiles a developer's expertise, role, and stylistic preferences, then adapts the depth and tone of its explanations accordingly, grounding them in project documentation via Retrieval-Augmented Generation. To evaluate TARS, we conducted a controlled experiment with 18 participants on non-trivial Java snippets. Participants using TARS completed tasks 26\% faster, reported lower cognitive load, and found the explanations meaningfully adapted to their profiles.

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Leopoldo Todisco, Antonio Della Porta, Stefano Lambiase, Fabio Palomba. 2026-07-17. TARS: A Theory-of-Mind Agent for Personalized In-IDE Code Comprehension. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15948

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