arXiv AI

Self-Evolving Algorithm-Design Agents: Escaping In-Context Evolutionary Stagnation via Population-Curated Policy Optimization

arXiv AI
Sep 25

iCoder-27B: Recursive AI-Led Development of Frontier Industrial Coding Model

The paper introduces iCoder-27B, a 27‑billion‑parameter model for RTL design and GPU kernel optimization that is developed through a recursive AI‑led process with minimal human input. Human experts provide high‑level objectives and reusable research skills, while the agent autonomously selects experiments, diagnoses outcomes, and refines training strategies, coordinating SFT, self‑distillation, and reinforcement learning. iCoder outperforms GPT‑5.5 and Claude‑Opus‑4.8 on several benchmarks, demonstrating the feasibility of building frontier‑competitive models with largely automated development.

By Cheng Yang, Jiayang Lyu, Shangyuan Liu, Guibin Zhang, Jiong Lin, Xinlei Yu, Junchi Yan, Shuicheng Yan, Weinan E, Linfeng Zhang, Linfeng Zhang, Qibing Ren
arXiv AI
Jun 6

MLEvolve: A Self-Evolving Framework for Automated Machine Learning Algorithm Discovery

arXiv:2606. 06473v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly applied to long-horizon tasks such as scientific discovery and machine learning engineering (MLE), where sustained self-evolution becomes a key capability.

By Shangheng Du, Xiangchao Yan, Jinxin Shi, Zongsheng Cao, Shiyang Feng, Zichen Liang, Boyuan Sun, Tianshuo Peng, Yifan Zhou, Xin Li, Jie Zhou, Liang He, Bo Zhang, Lei Bai
arXiv AI
3d ago

Self-Evolving Harness on Multiple Tasks with the Agent as Its Own Optimizer

The paper introduces a self‑evolving harness framework where a frozen language‑model agent first solves tasks and then edits its own harness based on run records. Using a 49‑line seed harness, the evolved harness improves average scores on in‑distribution benchmarks by 4.48 points and on out‑of‑distribution benchmarks by 12.64 points, surpassing Codex on the former and matching it on the latter. Continued evolution on a specific out‑of‑distribution benchmark further raises performance, and the study analyzes emergent mechanisms such as output truncation and history compaction.

By Qiankai Xu
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

RRSI: Regularized Recursive Self-Improvement of Agent Harnesses

The paper introduces Regularized Recursive Self-Improvement of Agent Harnesses (RRSI), a method that applies regularization principles to the iterative editing of an LLM agent’s harness—prompts, control flow, tooling, memory, and context management. RRSI limits the number of edits per candidate, encourages novel trajectories, and uses a critic and pruner to filter out benchmark‑specific or ineffective changes, thereby favoring reusable agent mechanisms. Experiments on eight benchmarks show RRSI improves performance by up to 14.1 points on the training split and 4.7 points on out‑of‑distribution tests, while reducing policy token usage by 30% compared to unregularized evolution.

By Peng Xia, Rujun Han, Zifeng Wang, Yanfei Chen, Yufan Zhang, Yoonho Lee, Chengsong Huang, Han Yu, Zhongying CuiZhu, Yifei Ming, Huaxiu Yao, Burak Gokturk, Tomas Pfister, Chen-Yu Lee
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Beyond Scaling: Self-Evolving LLM Agents for Hardware Kernel Optimization via an Experience-Driven Workflow and Experience Graph Memory

The paper introduces KOPE, an experience‑driven framework that records hardware kernel optimization trajectories in an Experience Graph Memory and uses Active Context Management and Injection to retrieve relevant past decisions under a fixed token budget. KOPE preserves decision order, outcomes, and alternative branches, enabling evidence from completed runs to inform future optimization steps. In experiments, KOPE achieves a 1.54× speedup over the strongest baseline, raises pass rates from 60.0% to 84.6%, and reduces token consumption dramatically, demonstrating the benefits of continual learning from external experience while keeping the foundation model unchanged.

By Siyuan Chen, Runlin Hou, Shenxiu Wu, Yansong Sun, Junming Cao, Yiyu Zhang, Shudi Shao, Junhao Qiu, Zhichao Lu, Qingfu Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 25

Agentic evolution of physically constrained foundation models

arXiv:2606. 25532v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Artificial intelligence increasingly drives automated scientific discovery, yet contemporary generalist agents lack physical grounding, frequently hallucinating hardware-incompatible designs.

By Jiangwei Zhang, Wen Sun, Chong Wang, Shiyao Li, Cheng Che, Chunjing Han, Dan Meng, Jian Yang, Yu Wang, Rui Hou
arXiv AI
Sep 7

OR-Agent: Bridging Evolutionary Search and Structured Research for Automated Heuristic Design

OR-Agent is a multi‑agent research framework that automates heuristic design for optimization problems by structuring heuristic search as a tree‑based workflow with explicit hypothesis generation and systematic backtracking. It introduces a hierarchical, optimization‑inspired reflection system that uses short‑term reflections as verbal gradients, long‑term reflections as verbal momentum, and memory compression as semantic weight decay to guide research dynamics. Experiments on classical combinatorial optimization tasks and simulation‑based cooperative driving scenarios show that OR‑Agent outperforms strong evolutionary search baselines, with all code and data publicly available.

By Qi Liu, Ruochen Hao, Can Li, Wanjing Ma