Automated Interpretability and Feature Discovery in Language Models with Agents
We introduce an autonomous multiagent framework for mechanistic interpretability that automates both explaining and finding internal features in large language models. The system runs two coupled loops: (1) explanation refinement, where an agent proposes competing hypotheses and iteratively tests them with targeted prompt controls and a multi-metric evaluation; and (2) feature discovery, where an agent generates prompt sets, constructs a k-nearest-neighbor graph in activation space, and retrieves candidate features using statistical separability and semantic coherence criteria. On Gemma-2 family models and MLP neurons in weight-sparse transformers, our agent improves over one-shot auto-interpretations, discovers language-specific and safety-relevant features, and produces auditable explanation traces, showing that agent-driven empirical loops yield sharper and more falsifiable explanations than one-shot labels.