CodeRefine: A Pipeline for Enhancing LLM-Generated Code Implementations of Research Papers

arXiv cs.CL / 3/27/2026

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Key Points

  • CodeRefine is a multi-step framework that converts research paper methodologies into functional implementations using LLMs, targeting the gap between theoretical descriptions and working code.
  • The pipeline extracts key paper text chunks, summarizes them, evaluates their code relevance, and builds a knowledge graph based on a predefined ontology to ground generation.
  • It generates code from the structured representation and then applies a retrospective retrieval-augmented generation approach to enhance correctness and usability.
  • The authors report that evaluations across diverse scientific papers show improved implementation quality compared with LLM zero-shot prompting, suggesting faster adoption of new algorithms in real-world systems.

Abstract

This paper presents CodeRefine, a novel framework for automatically transforming research paper methodologies into functional code using Large Language Models (LLMs). Our multi-step approach first extracts and summarizes key text chunks from papers, analyzes their code relevance, and creates a knowledge graph using a predefined ontology. Code is then generated from this structured representation and enhanced through a proposed retrospective retrieval-augmented generation approach. CodeRefine addresses the challenge of bridging theoretical research and practical implementation, offering a more accurate alternative to LLM zero-shot prompting. Evaluations on diverse scientific papers demonstrate CodeRefine's ability to improve code implementation from the paper, potentially accelerating the adoption of cutting-edge algorithms in real-world applications.