AutoSci

Memory-centric agentic system that executes the full scientific research lifecycle — literature understanding, ideation, experimentation, manuscript writing, and rebuttal — over a schema-governed persistent memory and evolves its own skills and templates across projects.

   
Affiliation Peking University, Data and Intelligence Research (PKUDAIR), Beijing
First introduced 2026-05 (arXiv:2605.31468)
Lifecycle stages Multi-stage (literature → ideation → experiment → writing → rebuttal), with Writing as a downstream stage
Autonomy level Fully autonomous over the five-stage lifecycle; trust-guarded memory writes use an independent reviewer agent
Domain focus General — case studies in GPU kernel optimization and biomedical drug discovery
Availability Open source — github.com/skyllwt/AutoSci

Approach

AutoSci is organized around four interlocking modules. SciMem is a schema-governed persistent research memory split into two regions: a Long-Term Knowledge Memory of typed entities (Topic, Paper, Foundation, Concept, Method, People) connected by 20+ typed relations into a navigable knowledge graph, and an Active Research Memory of project-level artifacts (Idea, Experiment, Manuscript, Review) carrying explicit lifecycle states. SciFlow is a harness-based lifecycle executor that runs over SciMem with more than 30 research skills spanning the five stages, making long-horizon research interruptible, resumable, and reviewable rather than a stream of free-form agent conversations. SciDAG augments difficult stages with DAG-shaped multi-agent operators (generate, variation, debate, refine, review — 9 reusable operators) and reusable stage-specific templates. SciEvolve converts traces and feedback from users, experiments, and reviews into versioned updates to SciMem organization, SciFlow skills, and SciDAG templates.

All memory writes pass through a Trust Guard that checks schema/lifecycle/link validity (deterministic linting) and evidence-support/consistency (independent reviewer agent), assigning PASS / WARN / BLOCK. Blocked artifacts are quarantined until resolved, preventing memory errors from propagating across projects.

Validation

Two end-to-end case studies covering GPU kernel optimization and biomedical drug discovery. Each produced reviewable paper-level artifacts that received automated ICLR-style review scores.

Notable results

  • AutoSci v1.0.0 implements 4 modules, 10 typed long-term entity types with 20+ typed relations, 30+ research skills across the five lifecycle stages, 9 reusable multi-agent operators, and 3 evolution skills.
  • The GPU kernel optimization case study yielded an artifact with an automated ICLR-review score of 6.3/10.
  • The biomedical drug-discovery case study yielded an artifact with an automated ICLR-review score of 5.8/10.

Primary paper

Qian, Xu, Xie, Fan, Tang et al., “AutoSci: A Memory-Centric Agentic System for the Full Scientific Research Lifecycle,” arXiv:2605.31468 (2026).

Other references

None yet.

Code

skyllwt/AutoSci — released with the preprint.