Vishwas Suryanarayanan

Reza Esfandiarpoor, Vishwas Suryanarayanan, Stephen H. Bach et al.

Since the introduction of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the number of available tools for Large Language Models (LLMs) has increased significantly. These task-specific tool sets offer an alternative to general-purpose tools such as web browsers, while being easier to develop and maintain than GUIs. However, current general-purpose agents predominantly rely on web browsers for interacting with the environment. Here, we introduce TheMCPCompany, a benchmark for evaluating tool-calling agents on tasks that involve interacting with various real-world services. We use the REST APIs of these services to create MCP servers, which include over 18,000 tools. We also provide manually annotated ground-truth tools for each task. In our experiments, we use the ground truth tools to show the potential of tool-calling agents for both improving performance and reducing costs assuming perfect tool retrieval. Next, we explore agent performance using tool retrieval to study the real-world practicality of tool-based agents. While all models with tool retrieval perform similarly or better than browser-based agents, smaller models cannot take full advantage of the available tools through retrieval. On the other hand, GPT-5's performance with tool retrieval is very close to its performance with ground-truth tools. Overall, our work shows that the most advanced reasoning models are effective at discovering tools in simpler environments, but seriously struggle with navigating complex enterprise environments. TheMCPCompany reveals that navigating tens of thousands of tools and combining them in non-trivial ways to solve complex problems is still a challenging task for current models and requires both better reasoning and better retrieval models.

Thong Q. Nguyen, Shubhang Desai, Raja Hasnain Anwar et al.

Continual memory augmentation lets computer-using agents (CUAs) learn from prior interactions, but unvetted memories can encode domain-inappropriate or unsafe heuristics--spurious rules that drift from user intent and safety constraints. We introduce VerificAgent, a scalable oversight framework that treats persistent memory as an explicit alignment surface. VerificAgent combines (1) an expert-curated seed of domain knowledge, (2) iterative, trajectory-based memory growth during training, and (3) a post-hoc human fact-checking pass to sanitize accumulated memories before deployment. Evaluated on OSWorld productivity tasks and additional adversarial stress tests, VerificAgent improves task reliability, reduces hallucination-induced failures, and preserves interpretable, auditable guidance--without additional model fine-tuning. By letting humans correct high-impact errors once, the verified memory acts as a frozen safety contract that future agent actions must satisfy. Our results suggest that domain-scoped, human-verified memory offers a scalable oversight mechanism for CUAs, complementing broader alignment strategies by limiting silent policy drift and anchoring agent behavior to the norms and safety constraints of the target domain.