Compiling Large Multi-Modal Requirement Documents into Runnable Software Systems: From an Agentic Test-Driven Perspective

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly improved programming efficiency by translating natural language into code, yet their performance deteriorates when handling large-scale, multi-modal requirement documents containing hundreds of scenarios, often producing incorrect implementations or missing critical constraints. To address this challenge, we propose ARC (Agentic Requirement Compilation), a framework that compiles DSL-based requirement documents into runnable software systems while automatically generating modular software architecture, comprehensive test suites, and traceability across requirements, design, and code. ARC adopts a bidirectional test-driven agentic workflow, combining a top-down architecture design phase with a bottom-up implementation phase to ensure that generated code satisfies synthesized tests. We evaluate ARC on six runnable web system benchmarks and the AppForge benchmark of 101 mobile app generation tasks. Across three independent trials, ARC consistently outperforms state-of-the-art LLM-based baselines, achieving 50.6% more GUI tests passed on average for web systems, a 100% compilation success rate, and a 68.3% test pass rate on AppForge. A user study with 21 participants further shows that users with limited programming experience can write DSL-based requirement documents containing up to 174 scenarios within an average of 5.6 hours to generate maintainable runnable systems, including a real-world ticket-booking application of approximately 10K lines of code.