ACM Multimedia 2026

Clarify Before Executing: A Self-Evolving Agent for Resolving Intent Asymmetry in 3D Tool Orchestration

Xiaoye Zhu, Weixin Li, Junan Huo, Bozhong Wang, Jia Zeng, Yi Yang, Cen Chen, Qi Liu

South China University of Technology Corresponding author

Abstract

A fundamental intent asymmetry plagues modern 3D asset creation: while state-of-the-art 3D toolchains demand precise, executable parameters, ordinary users typically provide vague, underspecified instructions. Current 3D agents treat this ambiguity as noise, defaulting to blind execution under a single-turn assumption. To address this limitation, we introduce CLARE, a clarification-aware and evolutionary 3D agent that treats intent asymmetry not as an execution error, but as an opportunity for strategic dialogue. By decoupling the generation pipeline into four specialized cognitive roles, CLARE intercepts and resolves underspecified instructions before invoking computationally expensive 3D tools to seamlessly execute tasks across five diverse domains: text-to-3D generation, single-view reconstruction, multi-view reconstruction, point cloud editing, and post-processing. Crucially, rather than relying on rigid manual rules, CLARE self-evolves its clarification policy via simulated multi-turn interactions. By optimizing a Multi-turn Reward, the agent internalizes the delicate balance between interaction efficiency and task completion. To rigorously test this, we construct 3D-Clarify, a comprehensive benchmark comprising 620 interaction scenarios with systematically injected ambiguity, missing information, and mistaken details. CLARE achieves state-of-the-art performance, with 60.40% and 43.34% success rates on single-step and multi-step tasks, respectively, more than doubling existing baselines. Both quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that proactive clarification is the missing key to robust 3D execution.

Interactive trajectory

Clarify Before Executing

Replay how CLARE resolves an underspecified request, opens the execution gate, and produces a verified 3D tool call.

CLARE Interactive trajectory
Demo mode

Clarification dialogue

Method

CLARE Framework

CLARE separates decision gating, context refinement, executable synthesis, and feedback alignment, then improves its clarification policy through simulated multi-turn self-evolution.

Overview of the CLARE clarify-before-execute framework and self-evolution pipeline
CLARE resolves intent asymmetry before invoking computationally expensive 3D tools and optimizes the clarification policy with Multi-turn Reward.

Benchmark

3D-Clarify

A controlled benchmark for testing whether 3D agents can uncover hidden intent, request missing parameters, and correct mistaken constraints.

500Single-step tasks
120Multi-step tasks
53D domains
3Intent issues
Overview of 3D-Clarify scenarios for ambiguity, missing information, and mistaken details
Each of the 620 interaction scenarios begins with a fixed hidden goal and an initial query containing ambiguity, missing information, or mistaken details.

Experiments

Main Results

Goal Completion Rate (CR, %) and Task Success Rate (SR, %) on the 3D-Clarify benchmark. Best and second-best results are shown in bold and underlined, respectively.

Comparison with static prompting, general-purpose agents, clarification-aware adapters, and CLARE variants. SE denotes self-evolution via Multi-turn Reward optimization.
Method 500 Single-step Tasks 120 Multi-step Tasks
Ambiguity Missing Mistaken Average Ambiguity Missing Mistaken Average
CRSR CRSR CRSR CRSR CRSR CRSR CRSR CRSR
Zero-shot 31.904.0017.250.0077.5534.8042.2312.93 20.430.0021.620.0085.3135.8342.4511.94
Few-shot 34.926.0018.420.0077.2532.6043.5312.87 23.030.0020.860.0089.0441.6744.3113.89
CoT 31.384.4018.150.0073.0325.8040.8510.07 19.920.0020.880.0086.1734.1742.3211.39
ReAct 29.885.4022.421.6050.3816.4034.237.80 14.510.0018.040.0074.7213.3335.764.44
Reflexion 39.478.4028.072.4069.3137.6045.6216.13 22.530.0025.600.0083.6823.3343.947.78
CLAMBER 50.8726.8044.8513.8071.3232.2055.6824.27 13.122.5021.234.1777.1221.6737.169.44
CEP 57.9437.6041.4819.2036.5216.4045.3124.40 25.205.0021.875.8348.708.3331.926.39
3D-GPT 35.1810.6034.4110.6056.0425.2041.8815.47 11.182.5021.241.6768.8520.0033.768.06
CLARE-base 59.3145.8057.5841.0081.9059.0066.2648.60 38.1623.3340.7322.5081.2535.8353.3827.22
CLARE-SE-SFT 62.2949.0069.4752.0085.4366.8072.4055.93 49.7234.1768.1044.1783.7748.3367.2042.22
CLARE-SE-DPO 70.5260.0075.3259.4074.6861.8073.5160.40 53.4134.1768.7449.1772.7546.6764.9743.34

CLARE-SE-DPO reaches 60.40% single-step SR and 43.34% multi-step SR, more than twice the strongest non-CLARE baselines.