OR-Agent: Bridging Evolutionary Search and Structured Research for Automated Algorithm Discovery

Abstract: Automating scientific discovery in complex, experiment-driven domains requires more than iterative mutation of programs; it demands structured hypothesis management, environment interaction, and principled reflection. We present OR-Agent, a configurable multi-agent research framework designed for automated exploration in rich experimental environments. OR-Agent organizes research as a structured tree-based workflow that explicitly models branching hypothesis generation and systematic backtracking, enabling controlled management of research trajectories beyond simple mutation-crossover loops. At its core, we introduce an evolutionary-systematic ideation mechanism that unifies evolutionary selection of research starting points, comprehensive research plan generation, and coordinated exploration within a research tree. We further propose a hierarchical optimization-inspired reflection system: short-term experimental reflection operates as a form of verbal gradient providing immediate corrective signals; long-term reflection accumulates cross-experiment insights as verbal momentum; and memory compression serves as a regularization mechanism analogous to weight decay, preserving essential signals while mitigating drift. Together, these components form a principled architecture governing research dynamics. We conduct extensive experiments across classical combinatorial optimization benchmarks-including traveling salesman, capacitated vehicle routing, bin packing, orienteering, and multiple knapsack problems-as well as simulation-based cooperative driving scenarios. Results demonstrate that OR-Agent outperforms strong evolutionary baselines while providing a general, extensible, and inspectable framework for AI-assisted scientific discovery. OR-Agent source code and experiments data are publicly available at https://github.com/qiliuchn/OR-Agent.