EditFlow: Benchmarking and Optimizing Code Edit Recommendation Systems via Reconstruction of Developer Flows

TL;DR

EditFlow introduces a benchmarking framework that reconstructs developer editing flows to improve code edit recommendation systems, aligning AI suggestions with natural developer reasoning.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel method for benchmarking and optimizing code editing models by reconstructing developer workflows and addressing challenges in data collection and simulation.

Findings

Reconstructed developer editing flows improve recommendation alignment.

Benchmarking with developer flow data reveals gaps in current models.

Optimization strategies enhance models' mental-flow awareness.

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) for code editing have achieved remarkable progress, yet recent empirical studies reveal a fundamental disconnect between technical accuracy and developer productivity. Despite their strong benchmark performance, developers complete tasks 19% slower when using AI assistance, with over 68.81% of recommendations disrupting their mental flow. This misalignment stems from the use of static commit snapshots that lack temporal information, causing models to optimize for end results rather than the incremental, context-sensitive steps that align with developers' natural reasoning process. To bridge this gap, we present EditFlow, which benchmarks and optimizes subsequent code edit recommendation systems through the reconstruction of developer editing flows. EditFlow addresses three key challenges. First, collecting edit-order data that reflects developers' flow is inherently difficult: manual annotation introduces prohibitive overhead, while development logs capture only single trajectories instead of all plausible editing flows. Second, benchmarking recommendation performance against developers' ongoing editing flow requires a digital-twin-like simulation that can faithfully simulate the editing process. Third, existing heterogeneous systems vary drastically in scale and architecture, posing challenges for developing a unified optimization strategy that endows all models with mental-flow awareness regardless of design or capability. ......