EngiWorld: What Can Frontier Agents Deliver in Professional Engineering Environments?

EngiWorld evaluates agents in professional engineering environments: 1,301 tasks, 26 software platforms, six domains, GUI and CLI interfaces, and artifact-centric evaluation.

Authors
Hongcheng Gao et al.
Published
Reading time
10 min
Resources
Watch the EngiWorld showcase · 88 successful GUI tasks from real experiment trajectories.

Overview

Autonomous agents have made rapid progress in general-purpose computer use, yet reliable automation of professional industrial engineering remains out of reach. Engineering workflows require reasoning over geometric and physical constraints and keeping dependencies consistent across software and design stages.

We present EngiWorld, a benchmark designed around the capabilities that real engineering projects require, from operating a single application to solving engineering problems end to end. It contains 1,301 expert-curated tasks spanning six engineering domains (CAD, CAE, CAM, BIM, EDA, and DCC) and 26 professional software applications, with both GUI and CLI interfaces. The tasks are organized into six types, corresponding to capabilities that real engineering projects require.

We further introduce an artifact-centric evaluation methodology built on a unified suite of domain verifiers. The verifiers programmatically check whether final and intermediate artifacts are geometrically valid, physically feasible, and compliant with design rules. Beyond binary success, they also score how well optimized designs meet their specifications. Evaluation of seven frontier models reveals a substantial capability gap: the strongest model scores only 44.7/100, and just 3.6% of runs on tasks that require cross-software coordination succeed. EngiWorld provides a rigorous foundation for measuring progress toward agents that operate professional engineering software end to end.

The benchmark

Six task types, testing the capabilities real engineering projects require.

  1. Single-Software Execution

    931

    Model, modify, or simulate an artifact in one designated application.

  2. Software Selection

    140

    Choose suitable software from a permitted set and complete the task.

  3. Vision-Guided Modeling

    120

    Build engineering models from reference drawings and visual requirements.

  4. Design Optimization

    40

    Optimize design quality while satisfying engineering feasibility constraints.

  5. Cross-Software Coordination

    60

    Carry out workflows that pass dependent artifacts across applications.

  6. Open-Environment Engineering

    10

    Choose and install software in a blank environment, then solve the engineering problem end to end.

1,723 task–software associations.
How the dataset is constructed

Experts define tasks and acceptance criteria; AI assists specification and verifier implementation. Each task is executed and reviewed in its software environment.

Evaluation

Agents work through GUI or CLI interfaces. Domain-specific verifiers reopen their deliverables and check the engineering properties that matter.

  1. Interact

    Start from a clean, task-specific workspace. Use visual observations and mouse or keyboard actions, or terminal commands and scripts.

  2. Deliver

    Submit native models, simulation outputs, circuits, building models, or 3D scenes, including intermediate files when the workflow requires them.

  3. Verify

    Recompute geometry, topology, physical quantities, rule compliance, and consistency across workflow stages against task-specific criteria.

Leaderboard

Seven frontier models on the same 306-task main evaluation, covering 158 CLI and 148 GUI tasks.

X axis
EngiScore

Each point is one model. Turns and cost are per-task means; output tokens are per-turn means. Hover a point, or choose a model, for its values. Exact results are in the table below.

Download results
EngiWorld main evaluation
# Model
01 Claude Opus 5 44.748.640.569.52.418.78
02 GPT-5.6 Sol 38.647.928.654.21.09.57
03 Qwen3.8 Max 26.335.316.6107.32.76.44
04 Gemini 3.7 Flash 26.137.214.2110.00.72.08
05 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 25.948.32.0115.39.80.80
06 Kimi K3 24.331.316.792.10.95.85
07 Qwen3.8 Flash 16.731.51.0119.61.30.44

306 tasks: 158 CLI and 148 GUI. Select a column heading to sort. EngiScore = 100 × mean task score. Binary tasks require every criterion to pass; Design Optimization tasks score 0–1 after feasibility checks. Infeasible outputs score 0.

Tasks spanning multiple domains count in each relevant domain.
Failure reason (%)
Failure reasons by model in the main evaluation
ModelnF1F2F3F4F5
Claude Opus 5 167 74.319.21.25.40.0
GPT-5.6 Sol 186 87.112.90.00.00.0
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 221 24.962.00.512.70.0
Gemini 3.7 Flash 224 40.259.40.00.00.4
Qwen3.8 Max 224 38.858.51.80.00.9
Kimi K3 230 54.840.94.30.00.0
Qwen3.8 Flash 254 26.861.012.20.00.0
F1
Declared completion
F2
Turn limit reached
F3
Declared failure
F4
Runtime limit exceeded
F5
Desktop closed

1,506 analyzed main-evaluation failures; 7 evaluator-side missing-output or missing-entry cases excluded.

Analysis

Controlled ablations vary visual inputs, accessibility information, screenshot resolution, and interaction history.

Accessibility and resolution: GUI tasks. History: both interfaces. Resolution is relative to 1920 × 1080.

Reference images in the message

For GPT-5.6 Sol , GUI EngiScore rises from 15.0 to 31.7 when the reference drawing is shown directly in the task message. Easier access helps agents find information but does not ensure that they use it correctly.

Richer observations have tradeoffs

Accessibility trees improve Kimi , barely change GPT , and lower Gemini’s score. API cost rises by 51–148% even though all three models use fewer turns.

History length is model dependent

Gemini benefits from a 15-turn window; GPT largely plateaus after 10 turns. Kimi performs best at 10, with a longer window reducing its score and increasing cost.

Initial-image presentation

EngiScore by initial-image presentation
ModelGUICLI
Env.MessageEnv.Message
GPT-5.6 Sol 15.031.763.368.3
Gemini 3.7 Flash 3.310.038.340.0
Kimi K3 6.710.040.036.7

Runtime image access in CLI

EngiScore with runtime image access disabled or enabled
ModelWith initial imageWithout initial image
OffOnOffOn
GPT-5.6 Sol 66.768.348.141.5
Gemini 3.7 Flash 36.740.033.336.6
Kimi K3 41.736.731.526.5

Case studies

Four Single-Software Execution GUI workflows from the paper. Each passes its task-specific artifact checks and receives a score of 1.0.

  1. EDA / KiCad

    Connect a data bus and preserve the circuit

    Eight distinct data nets establish the required MCU–SRAM mapping. The saved schematic retains the existing circuitry and passes with zero electrical-rule errors.

  2. CAD / AutoCAD

    Build a precise staggered hole pattern

    Two rectangular arrays create 23 tube holes. The exported DXF preserves the required coordinates, radii, entity types, and layer assignments.

  3. CAD / SolidWorks

    Align parts while preserving geometry

    The sliding block is positioned against the base. The exported STEP retains both independent solids and their original dimensions.

  4. DCC / Blender

    Deliver a scene with a packed AO bake

    A 512 × 512 ambient-occlusion image is baked and packed into the saved native scene, preserving the computed pixels in the deliverable.

Where Cross-Software Coordination workflows break down

The recorded failures span import-scale errors, incorrect action targeting, and mismatches between submitted representations and verifier expectations. In the load case, a pressure representation does not satisfy the verifier’s force/displacement check; in the CSV case, an unrecognized diameter-field name stops evaluation before downstream geometry checks.

Submit Your Agent

If you are developing an AI model or agent and would like to evaluate it on EngiWorld, we welcome you to contact us at gaohongcheng2000@gmail.com. Please include a publicly accessible link to your model or agent.

We will confirm the evaluation scope, service fee, and timeline with you, complete the evaluation as agreed, and share the results.

Authors

  • Hongcheng Gao1,2,*,†
  • Hailong Qu3,*
  • Yu Lei4,*
  • Henghui Sun5
  • Haoyang Li6
  • Yipeng Wei4
  • Naihao Xue7
  • Xiaohan Yu8
  • Zhuo Tao4
  • Yihe Zang9
  • Yajiao Wang4
  • Jingyi Tang10
  • Yi Li4
  • Jingjing Zhou4
  • Jie Luo2
  • Bohan Zeng10
  • Chengyu Shen10
  • Hao Jiang11
  • Chong Chen1
  • Bowen Qu10
  • Olive Huang10
  • Zeqiang Wang2
  1. 1Tsinghua University
  2. 2Zhiman AI
  3. 3Chongqing University
  4. 4UCAS
  5. 5Shandong University
  6. 6BUPT
  7. 7Fudan University
  8. 8Henan Polytechnic University
  9. 9Xi'an Jiaotong University
  10. 10Peking University
  11. 11Zhejiang University

* Equal contribution · † Corresponding author

Cite this work

@misc{engiworld2026,
  title = {EngiWorld: What Can Frontier Agents Deliver in Professional Engineering Environments?},
  author = {Hongcheng Gao and Hailong Qu and Yu Lei and Henghui Sun and Haoyang Li and Yipeng Wei and Naihao Xue and Xiaohan Yu and Zhuo Tao and Yihe Zang and Yajiao Wang and Jingyi Tang and Yi Li and Jingjing Zhou and Jie Luo and Bohan Zeng and Chengyu Shen and Hao Jiang and Chong Chen and Bowen Qu and Olive Huang and Zeqiang Wang},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2609.37686},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass = {cs.AI},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37686}
}