Inside the Scaffold: A Source-Code Taxonomy of Coding Agent Architectures

arXiv:2604.03515v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM-based coding agents can localize bugs, generate patches, and run tests with diminishing human oversight, yet the scaffolding code that surrounds the language model (the control loop, tool definitions, state management, and context strategy) remains poorly understood. Existing surveys classify agents by abstract capabilities (tool use, planning, reflection) that cannot distinguish between architecturally distinct systems, and trajectory studie