# Patch Retrieval

PatchHolmes is a two-phase patch retrieval system whose first stage fuses BM25 with time decay and Qwen3-Embedding-8B dense retrieval via RRF into a top-100 candidate set, and whose second stage runs a frozen open-weight LLM agent that views all 100 candidates listwise through four tools (list_candidates, read_commit, read_file_diff, submit_answer) and submits a single best commit; on 809 CVEs from GitHubAD it reaches 59.95% Recall@1, 25.34% above the pointwise classifier Favia and 31.40% above IRCoT, adds 27.32% Recall@1 over the retriever's top pick on identical candidates, and transfers unchanged to PatchFinder_top10 to lift Recall@1 from 24.28% to 39.86%.

PatchHolmes is a two-phase patch retrieval system whose first stage fuses BM25 with time decay and Qwen3-Embedding-8B dense retrieval via RRF into a top-100 candidate set, and whose second stage runs a frozen open-weight LLM agent that views all 100 candidates listwise through four tools (list_candidates, read_commit, read_file_diff, submit_answer) and submits a single best commit; on 809 CVEs from GitHubAD it reaches 59.95% Recall@1, 25.34% above the pointwise classifier Favia and 31.40% above IRCoT, adds 27.32% Recall@1 over the retriever's top pick on identical candidates, and transfers unchanged to PatchFinder_top10 to lift Recall@1 from 24.28% to 39.86%.