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PropUQ-MAS: Propagation-Aware Uncertainty Quantification for LLM Multi-Agent Systems

Aug 2026 · 1 citation · 34 references
Computer Science

TL;DR

PropUQ-MAS is proposed, an error propagation-aware UQ framework that represents MAS execution as a communication-structured graph and estimates each step's reliability by combining local uncertainty with uncertainty inherited from upstream messages.

Abstract

LLM-based multi-agent systems (MAS) solve complex tasks through communication among role-specialized agents. However, inter-agent dependencies introduce reliability risks beyond isolated agent failures. For instance, errors in intermediate messages could be inherited and amplified by downstream agents. Existing uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods mainly target isolated responses or single-agent reasoning, and therefore fail to capture uncertainty propagation in MAS. To this end, we propose PropUQ-MAS, an error propagation-aware UQ framework that represents MAS execution as a communication-structured graph and estimates each step's reliability by combining local uncertainty with uncertainty inherited from upstream messages. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PropUQ-MAS consistently improves UQ in MAS, with average relative gains of +6.10% in AUROC and +47.58% in PRR.

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