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:2607. 20468v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents are increasingly used to automate research and development tasks, yet existing benchmarks typically evaluate them on prescribed workflows or narrow action spaces.
By Jehyeok Yeon, Ben Rank, Maksym Andriushchenko
arXiv:2608. 06714v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent systems for optimizing prompts, programs, and ML workflows typically rely on explicit outer-loop controllers such as evolutionary search, bandits, or textual-gradient methods.
By Junbo Li, Boyi Liu, Canwen Xu, Yite Wang, Yuxiong He, Zhangyang Wang, Qiang Liu, Zhewei Yao
arXiv:2608. 12564v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Automating empirical research is a long-standing direction of AI.
By Xiyuan Yang, Sheikh Sarwar, Jingru Cheng, Zhan Shi, Duanshun Li, Huiyuan Chen, Haiyang Zhang, Chenlei Guo, Jingrui He, Zhenyu Liao
arXiv:2608. 06301v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As LLMs are increasingly deployed within agentic systems, their capabilities depend not only on the model weights but also on the harness: the prompts, tools, control flow, memory, and orchestration code surrounding them.
By Varun Ursekar, Apaar Shanker, Yash Maurya, Shehab Yasser, Vijay S. Kalmath, Veronica Chatrath, Yuan Xue
The paper introduces TerminalHorizon, an automated engine that synthesizes long‑horizon trajectories for terminal agents by reconstructing environments from real‑world professional work and progressively expanding tasks to require further exploration and improvement. Using this engine, the authors create 1.5K task environments and fine‑tune Qwen3.5‑27B, producing TerminalHorizon‑27B, which shows significant performance gains across 12 benchmarks in coding, agentic production tasks, and reasoning. Case studies demonstrate the model’s ability to experiment beyond initial solutions, refine methods based on feedback, and preserve effective improvements in final deliverables.
By Shun Zou, Ziyu Ma, Yi Zou, Yong Wang, Lin Chen, Zehui Chen, Guanhua Chen, Xiangxiang Chu, Feng Zhao
arXiv:2607. 03451v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While skill optimization for autonomous agents has gained traction, existing methods rely on complex pipelines.
By Yifei Shen, Bo Li, Xinjie Zhang
The paper introduces OptTips, a knowledge base of 50 expert optimization modeling techniques, and OptDachshund, a multi‑agent framework that generates mathematical models and solver code from natural‑language problem descriptions. Using these tools, the authors create the EfficientOpt benchmark, comprising 561 expert‑reviewed tasks with paired reference implementations, to evaluate large language models (LLMs) on both correctness and computational efficiency. Their experiments with 11 LLMs show a consistent efficiency gap: even when LLMs produce correct solutions, the resulting programs often take longer to solve than expert‑crafted counterparts, highlighting the need to assess both accuracy and runtime performance in LLM‑based optimization modeling.
By Zhong Li, Xin Huang, Jinhui Wan, Xiangyi Wang, Shenkai Zhang, Ruiqi Chen, Wenyu Liu, Zaiwen Wen, Ziyan Luo
Recent systems for optimizing prompts, programs, and ML workflows typically rely on explicit outer-loop controllers such as evolutionary search, bandits, or textual-gradient methods. We ask a fundamentally different question: how much of this search policy can be internalized by a single tool-using agent?
The paper introduces InFlowOp, a label‑free optimization framework that assigns costs to each decision in a multi‑agent workflow, balancing agent competence against execution time. It determines task granularity and agent assignment before execution and corrects faults during execution using the same cost metric. The authors also present Braid, a benchmark for multi‑agent coordination, and show that InFlowOp outperforms single‑agent baselines by up to 11.97% across various domains.
By Xuehang Guo, Haoyu Wang, Shengyu Chen, Zach Chen, Wei Cheng, Qingyun Wang, Haifeng Chen
arXiv:2609.01045v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities as powerful components in agentic systems, enabling sophisticated reasoning and...
By Enci Zhang, Haofeng Wang, Yuesheng Zhu, Xiaole Cui, Guibo Luo
arXiv:2610.28201v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Recursive self-improvement (RSI) of agent harnesses has emerged as an effective approach to enhancing the capabilities of large language model (LLM) ag...
By Yu Cui, Hong He, Ruiqing Yue, Sicheng Pan, Zhuoyu Sun, Yifei Liu, Ting Li, Wenzhuo Zhu, Baohan Huang, Haibin Zhang, Cong Zuo