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HiRA: Decoupling Planning and Execution with Hierarchical Reasoning in Deep Search

sigir26-142 · Full research paper · Jiajie Jin, Xiaoxi Li, Yuyao Zhang, Guanting Dong, Zhao Yang, Yutao Zhu, Zhicheng Dou
Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Re · 25% Agentic and Deep Search RAG · 25% Deep Research and Report Generation · 25% Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestrati · 25%
Abstract

Complex information needs in real-world search scenarios demand deep reasoning and knowledge synthesis across diverse sources, which traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines struggle to address effectively. Current reasoning-based approaches face a key architectural challenge: they employ a single model to handle both high-level planning and detailed execution, resulting in inefficient reasoning and limited scalability. In this paper, we introduce HiRA, a hierarchical framework that separates strategic planning from specialized execution. Our approach decomposes complex search tasks into multiple subtasks, assigns each subtask to a domain-specific agent equipped with external tools and reasoning capabilities, and coordinates the results through a structured integration mechanism. This separation prevents execution details from disrupting high-level reasoning while enabling the system to leverage specialized expertise for different types of information processing. Experiments on four complex, cross-modal deep search benchmarks show that HiRA significantly outperforms state-of-the-art RAG and agent-based systems, highlighting the effectiveness of decoupled planning and execution for multi-step information seeking tasks. The code is available at https://github.com/RUC-NLPIR/HiRA.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy)
1 Jialong Wu 0007
58
74 WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversal (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
60 WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agency (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation
60 Nested Browser-Use Learning for Agentic Information Seeking (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation
2 Wonduk Seo
56
58 SPIO: Ensemble and Selective Strategies via LLM-Based Multi-Agent Planning in Automated Data Science (2026) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
47 Automated Visualization Code Synthesis via Multi-path Reasoning and Feedback-Driven Optimizations (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
38 A New Query Expansion Approach for Enhancing Information Retrieval via Agent-Mediated Dialogic Inquiry (2026) Query Reformulation and Expansion
3 Kaixin Ma
52
72 Retrieval-augmented GUI Agents with Generative Guidelines (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
58 Knowledge-enhanced Agents for Interactive Text Games (2023) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
58 WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models (2024) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Dacheng Tao 44
Area-chair candidates (7)
Xiaoxi Li 0005 COI: author 5415 papers
Hongjin Qian COI: co-author 4712 papers
Dacheng Tao assigned 445 papers
Zhijing Wu 0001 439 papers
Jun Xu 0001 COI: co-author 392 papers
Xiaoxue Zang 394 papers
Pengyue Jia 3810 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
1 Jialong Wu 0007 assigned 58 3
74 WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversal (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
60 WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agency (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation
2 Wonduk Seo assigned 56 3
58 SPIO: Ensemble and Selective Strategies via LLM-Based Multi-Agent Planning in Automated Data Science (2026) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
47 Automated Visualization Code Synthesis via Multi-path Reasoning and Feedback-Driven Optimizations (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
4 Kaixin Ma assigned 52 3
72 Retrieval-augmented GUI Agents with Generative Guidelines (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
58 Knowledge-enhanced Agents for Interactive Text Games (2023) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
5 Wenlin Zhang 0001 49 3
74 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
73 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
6 Farzad Shami 48 3
59 GROKE: Vision-Free Navigation Instruction Evaluation via Graph Reasoning on OpenStreetMap (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
38 From Single to Multi-agent Reasoning: Advancing GeneGPT for Genomics QA (2026) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA
7 Xingyu Tan 0001 47 3
55 HydraRAG: Structured Cross-Source Enhanced Large Language Model Reasoning (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning
55 Paths-over-Graph: Knowledge Graph Empowered Large Language Model Reasoning (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning
8 Haritz Puerto 47 3
58 MetaQA: Combining Expert Agents for Multi-Skill Question Answering (2023) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA
42 Fine-Tuning on Diverse Reasoning Chains Drives Within-Inference CoT Refinement in LLMs (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
10 Yingyi Zhang 0001 47 3
73 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
61 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
11 Yu Gu 0016 45 3
61 Mind2Web 2: Evaluating Agentic Search with Agent-as-a-Judge (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation
56 Middleware for LLMs: Tools Are Instrumental for Language Agents in Complex Environments (2024) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning
14 Weiwei Sun 0001 COI: co-author 42 3
73 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG
45 ReasonRank: Empowering Passage Ranking with Strong Reasoning Ability (2026) LLM-Based Reranking
15 Ori Yoran 42 3
59 AssistantBench: Can Web Agents Solve Realistic and Time-Consuming Tasks? (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
46 Answering Questions by Meta-Reasoning over Multiple Chains of Thought (2023) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking
16 Chen Zhao 0013 41 3
61 Beyond Single-shot Writing: Deep Research Agents are Unreliable at Multi-turn Report Revision (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation
56 SportReason: Evaluating Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning across Tables and Text for Sports Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
17 Qinggang Zhang 41 3
54 You Don't Need Pre-Built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
42 Knapsack Optimization-Based Schema Linking for LLM-Based Text-to-SQL Generation (2026) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA
18 Mariano Barone 41 3
58 SOLVE-Med: Specialized Orchestration for Leading Vertical Experts Across Medical Specialties (2025) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA
40 Combining Evidence and Reasoning for Biomedical Fact-Checking (2025) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification
19 Qisheng Hu 41 3
55 Coordinating Search-Informed Reasoning and Reasoning-Guided Search in Claim Verification (2026) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification
42 Just What You Desire: Constrained Timeline Summarization with Self-Reflection for Enhanced Relevance (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA
20 Yong Li 0004 41 3
73 PG-Agent: An Agent Powered by Page Graph (2025) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
47 ProBench: Benchmarking GUI Agents with Accurate Process Information (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
21 Shuaiqiang Wang COI: co-author 41 3
73 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
60 Thinking Forward and Backward: Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
22 Archiki Prasad 41 3
56 MAgICoRe: Multi-Agent, Iterative, Coarse-to-Fine Refinement for Reasoning (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
47 ReCEval: Evaluating Reasoning Chains via Correctness and Informativeness (2023) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
23 Ben Liu 0002 40 3
59 MoodAngels: A Retrieval-augmented Multi-agent Framework for Psychiatry Diagnosis (2025) RAG for Domain Applications
52 SymAgent: A Neural-Symbolic Self-Learning Agent Framework for Complex Reasoning over Knowledge Graphs (2025) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
24 Xi Ye 0003 40 3
61 Beyond Single-shot Writing: Deep Research Agents are Unreliable at Multi-turn Report Revision (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation
47 MuSR: Testing the Limits of Chain-of-thought with Multistep Soft Reasoning (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
25 Nancy F. Chen 40 3
58 Multi-expert Prompting Improves Reliability, Safety and Usefulness of Large Language Models (2024) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
43 Learning Planning-based Reasoning by Trajectories Collection and Process Reward Synthesizing (2024) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
26 Weizhou Shen 40 3
59 Small LLMs Are Weak Tool Learners: A Multi-LLM Agent (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
58 Mobile-Agent-v2: Mobile Device Operation Assistant with Effective Navigation via Multi-Agent Collaboration (2024) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration
27 Daiting Shi COI: co-author 40 3
46 Reinforced Efficient Reasoning via Semantically Diverse Exploration (2026) RL Training of Search Agents
42 A Question-Oriented Propagation Network for News Reading Comprehension (2022) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA
28 Shu Zhou 0002 40 3
59 SCORE-RAG: Self-Correcting Exploration-Exploitation Retrieval for Multi-hop Question Answering (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
54 DynKGRAG: A framework for dynamic knowledge graph construction and multi-hop querying over numerical and textual data (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
29 Wenyu Huang 40 3
43 Prompting large language models with knowledge graphs for question answering involving long-tail facts (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning
42 Masking in Multi-hop QA: An Analysis of How Language Models Perform with Context Permutation (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA
31 Keqin Bao 39 3
59 Teaching Language Models to Reason with Tools (2025) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
47 MTR-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multi-Turn Reasoning Evaluation (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks
32 Farima Fatahi Bayat 39 3
45 From Proof to Program: Characterizing Tool-Induced Reasoning Hallucinations in Large Language Models (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
35 FactBench: A Dynamic Benchmark for In-the-Wild Language Model Factuality Evaluation (2025) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification
34 Qingyi Si 39 3
43 S-GRPO: Early Exit via Reinforcement Learning in Reasoning Models (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
42 Test-time Prompt Intervention (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision
35 Jinheon Baek 39 3
56 Adaptive-RAG: Learning to Adapt Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models through Question Complexity (2024) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
42 Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning Distillation for Small Language Models in Knowledge-Intensive Tasks (2023) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA
36 Jiapu Wang 39 3
56 Decomposing and Revising What Language Models Generate (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning
56 Atomic Fact Decomposition Helps Attributed Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning