StructureClaw: Traceable LLM Agents and an Executable Benchmark for Structural Engineering Workflows

Abstract

Addressing a structural-engineering request requires more than a single answer; it requires a chain of interdependent artifacts: interpreted requirements, a computable model, validation records, solver outputs, applicable engineering checks, and a final report. Evaluations centered on question answering or script generation may therefore reward fluent outputs even when the underlying workflow is incomplete, inconsistent, or non-executable. We present StructureClaw, an artifact-centered workbench in which LLM agents operate through governed engineering skills, typed tools, shared artifact state, and local analysis backends, together with StructureClaw-Bench, an executable benchmark of 150 controlled scenarios spanning standard workflows, interactive robustness, and multimodal structural-model reconstruction. Its analyzable standard and multimodal cases require both strict one-to-one structural-model matching and numerical-response agreement with frozen reference responses from the selected analysis engine; interactive cases instead require positive clarification or recovery evidence together with safe non-execution when appropriate. A trial succeeds only when every fixture-required assertion passes. Across nine text-agent configurations, generic-only execution passed the model-artifact check in 87.0% of retained outcomes but achieved only 22.0% E2E Success, whereas automatic StructureClaw reached 82.9%. Interactive and multimodal evaluations further identify semantic state consistency and executable model reconstruction as the dominant remaining bottlenecks. The code and benchmark are available at https://github.com/structureclaw/structureclaw.