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If It's Not Buggy, Don't Fix It: On the Dynamics of Iterative Bug-fixing with LLMs

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 9, 2026 · UTC

Large language models (LLMs) have become ubiquitous in software development, with LLM-based automated program repair tools increasingly used during code review. In this report, we explore the iterative blind use of LLMs as bug-fixers. Across multiple models and repair environments, we find that LLMs consistently claim to detect bugs in entirely bug-free programs while the rate of repair of buggy programs is less than that of the damage to correct programs. We also explore the long-term dynamics of this iterative process, and find that this frequently reaches a pseudo-bug-fixing cycle where the

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