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arXiv · 2608.21156

Graph Engineering in the Era of LLM Agents: From Individual Intelligence to System Intelligence

Yuyuan Feng·Zhishang Xiang·Chaobin Yang·Qichao Ma·Zerui Chen·Yujing Zhang·Ke Huang·Chuanjie Wu·Zhaoxu Liu·Yili Wang·Xin He·Jiapu Wang·Zijin Hong·Hao Chen·Yuanchen Bei·Kun Wang·Shengyuan Chen·Ningyu Zhang·Enyan Dai·Linhao Luo·Qingyi Pan·Qi Wang·Wenqi Fan·Guangjing Wang·Na Zou·Yangqiu Song·Xin Wang·Zechao Li·Xia Hu·Qing Li·Xiao Huang·Zhihong Zhang·Jinsong Su·Qinggang Zhang·Yi Chang
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Abstract

LLMs have evolved from language generators to autonomous agents capable of complex, long-horizon tasks. This evolution has produced paradigms including Prompt Engineering to elicit model capabilities, Context Engineering to manage information access, Harness Engineering to organize external tools and resources, and Loop Engineering to support continual reflection and self-improvement. Yet as tasks grow more complex, individual intelligence faces a fundamental limit: many tasks require heterogeneous expertise, interdependent subtasks, parallel execution, independent verification, and persistent state, exceeding any single agent's organizational capacity. Augmenting one agent's capabilities or context cannot resolve this architectural mismatch; intelligence must instead be distributed across specialized agents and organized at the system level. We call this System Intelligence: an agent system's ability to organize and coordinate multiple intelligent components into a coherent, adaptive whole pursuing a shared objective. Achieving it requires more than adding agents; it demands explicit structures to organize work, coordinate heterogeneous agents, and maintain evolving execution states. We introduce Graph Engineering, an emerging paradigm for next-generation agent systems. Unlike prior paradigms that mainly optimize individual interactions or agent-level behavior, Graph Engineering constructs explicit, dynamic, evolving graph structures representing tasks, agents, and system states. These abstractions provide a unified foundation for organizing complex objectives, orchestrating heterogeneous agents, modeling system dynamics, and enabling scalable agent evolution. We systematically review the principles, methodologies, and applications of Graph Engineering for LLM agents. Related papers, open-source data, and projects are collected at https://github.com/DEEP-JLU/Awesome-Graph-Engineering.

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Yuyuan Feng, Zhishang Xiang, Chaobin Yang, Qichao Ma, Zerui Chen, Yujing Zhang, Ke Huang, Chuanjie Wu, Zhaoxu Liu, Yili Wang, Xin He, Jiapu Wang, Zijin Hong, Hao Chen, Yuanchen Bei, Kun Wang, Shengyuan Chen, Ningyu Zhang, Enyan Dai, Linhao Luo, Qingyi Pan, Qi Wang, Wenqi Fan, Guangjing Wang, Na Zou, Yangqiu Song, Xin Wang, Zechao Li, Xia Hu, Qing Li, Xiao Huang, Zhihong Zhang, Jinsong Su, Qinggang Zhang, Yi Chang. 2026-08-21. Graph Engineering in the Era of LLM Agents: From Individual Intelligence to System Intelligence. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21156

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