RECODE: A Benchmark for Research Code DEvelopment with Interactive Human Feedback

Large language models (LLMs) show the promise in supporting scientific research implementation, yet their ability to generate correct and executable code remains limited. Existing works largely adopt one-shot settings, ignoring the iterative and feedback-driven nature of realistic workflows of scientific research development. To address this gap, we present RECODE, a benchmark of 102 tasks from research papers and repositories that evaluates LLMs through multi-turn interactions with human feedback. It includes structured instructions, unit tests, and a five-level feedback hierarchy to reflect realistic researcher–agent collaboration. We further present ReCodeAgent, a framework that integrates feedback into iterative code generation. Experimentswith leading LLMs, including GPT-5, Claude-Sonnet-4, DeepSeek-V3.1, and Gemini 2.5, show substantial performance gains with richer feedback, while also highlighting ongoing challenges in the generation of complex research code. RECODE establishes a foundation for developing adaptive, feedback-driven LLM agents in scientific research implementation.