From Prompts to Self-Prompts: Parameter-Efficient Multi-Label Remote Sensing via Mask-Guided Classification

Multi-label remote sensing scene classification (MLRSSC) requires autonomous discovery of all relevant land-cover categories without human guidance. Conventional expert classifiers return only label vectors without spatial evidence, while foundation segmenters (e.g., SAM, RemoteSAM) remain passively dependent on external prompts—misaligned with autonomous interpretation. We introduce SAFI-XRS, a parameter-efficient self-prompted framework that transforms passive prompting into active scene parsing. By training only <2% of a 332M-parameter segmenter (∼2.4M parameters), SAFI-XRS generates class-aligned queries from images via a Semantic Query Generator (SQR), replacing external prompts with self-generated conditioning. A Mask-Guided Classifier (MGC) aggregates spatial evidence into label confidences, enabling mask-based explainability. Experiments on UCM-ML, DFC15-ML, and AID-ML show SAFI-XRS surpasses text-prompted foundation segmenters (+3.9/+3.8 mAP on balanced datasets) while achieving 6.8× parameter efficiency compared to expert models, validating a practical path toward autonomous, explainable RS scene understanding.