A Survey of LLM-based Software Repair: Taxonomies, Design Paradigms, and Applications

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping automated program repair. We present a reproducible hierarchical taxonomy that organizes 66 LLM-based repair systems according to where repair capability and control logic principally reside: taskadapted parameters, prompt and context design, designer-specified workflows, or LLM-directed runtime control. Adaptation, generation pattern, runtime control, and auxiliary evidence remain separate coded dimensions. This representation exposes control distinctions hidden by utilization labels and supports cross-paradigm analysis of system design and evaluation evidence. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first publicly available LLM-based software repair survey to operationalize Fine-Tuning, Prompting, Procedural, and Agentic as one corpus-wide primary classification. Our hierarchy complements prior surveys with a single corpus-wide primary decision rule, while the result-level protocol audit bounds which reported results are defensibly comparable. To analyze how repair systems use benchmarks, we record benchmark variants, metrics, base models, and fault-localization assumptions for each system’s primary reported result, identifying protocol-aligned comparison windows and benchmark-family fragments. We clarify paradigm trade-offs in task alignment, deployment cost, controllability, and multi-hunk or cross-file repair. We outline open challenges and research directions. Our artifacts and scripted survey pipeline are publicly available at https://github.com/GLEAM-Lab/ProgramRepair .

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2026 · DOI ↗