arXiv Machine Learning

ToolAtlas: Learning Once, Reusing Everywhere with Tool-Side Memory

arXiv:2607. 11126v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on external tools served by shared providers and accessed by heterogeneous downstream agents.

arXiv AI
Sep 3

Harness Engineering in LLM Tool Use via Agent-Native Reusable Tool Primitives

The paper introduces Tool Primitives, a design that replaces rigid API schemas with natural language interfaces for tool calling, enabling seamless inter-tool communication. It builds ToolFace, a repository of over 25,000 functions that LLMs can dynamically retrieve, and HEART, a harness engineering framework that orchestrates tool use with planning, routing, and verification. Experiments show HEART outperforms fine‑tuned models and leading commercial LLMs while cutting API costs by up to 85%.

By Haibo Jin, Suijin Wang, Xucheng Yu, Haojing Luo, Haohan Wang
arXiv AI
Jul 17

MCPEvol-Bench: Benchmarking LLM Agent Performance Across Dynamic Evolutions of MCP Servers

arXiv:2607. 14642v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers emerge as the core infrastructure for connecting LLMs with external tools, existing benchmarks leverage real-world MCP servers to evaluate LLM agents' tool-using capabilities.

By Huanxi Liu, Kun Hu, Jiaqi Liao, Qiang Wang, Pengfei Qian, YuanZhao Zhai, Dawei Feng, Bo Ding, Huaimin Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Grow the Harness, Not the Context: From Strategy-Free Scaffolds to Reusable Specialist Agents

The paper introduces Growing Harness, a training method that transforms recurring control logic in large language model agents into reusable executable code, reducing reliance on the model for task-specific decisions. By using strategy-free scaffolds, failure-guided code repair, and success-first gating, the approach learns a shared harness that improves performance across multiple benchmarks and model sizes. Experiments on BrowseComp-Plus and WebArena-Verified show significant gains in success rates and substantial reductions in LLM calls and inference cost compared to traditional tool‑calling agents.

By Laizhen Li, Jiarui Li, Juanjuan Zhao, Kejiang Ye, Ye Li, Cheng-zhong Xu, Xitong Gao
arXiv AI
Sep 12

Grounding Agent Memory: Environment-Probing Curation for Enterprise Agents

The paper introduces environment‑probing curation, a deployment‑compatible method that equips asynchronous curator agents with read‑only world tools to verify, scope, and refresh candidate memories without retraining models. In a GitHub Copilot‑based harness, this approach improves pass rates on CLBench from 39% to 73%, boosts reward metrics, and reduces both query counts and task‑agent costs. Across six APEX management‑consulting tasks, the method consistently outperforms baselines, yielding higher rewards and fewer tool calls while maintaining a compact task‑time interface.

By Susheel Suresh, Hazel Mak, Sahil Bhatnagar, Chhaya Methani, Alejandro Gutierrez Munoz
arXiv AI
Aug 26

Hybrid Semantic Tool Discovery for Enterprise MCP Gateway: Architecture and Implementation

Hybrid Semantic Tool Discovery for Enterprise MCP Gateway presents SCOUT, a system that addresses two major challenges in large language model (LLM) agent tool usage: a context‑engineering bottleneck and a tool discoverability barrier. SCOUT reframes tool exposure as a context‑selection problem, injecting only relevant tools into the model’s context window and providing two MCP meta‑tools—tool_search and execute_tool—to perform hybrid retrieval via BM25 and dense vector search. In production at PayPal, SCOUT cuts MCP tool‑token consumption by 99%, dramatically reducing per‑query inference cost while remaining model‑agnostic and requiring no client‑side changes.

By Olympia Saha, Amy Wang, Srinivasan Manoharan
arXiv AI
Aug 18

From LLM Inference to Agentic Workloads: Characterization and Implications for Serving Systems

arXiv:2608. 15127v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agentic applications are shifting AI serving from isolated model inference to long-running workloads in which LLMs coordinate tools, environments, and persistent state.

By Chaokun Chang, Yukun Zhou, Kaihua Fu, Dakai An, Tianyu Feng, Hanfeng Lu, Sheng Yao, Pu Guo, Yinghao Yu, Yizhou Shan, Bo Li, Binhang Yuan, Wei Wang
arXiv AI
Aug 19

SkillEffect: Checked Lowering for Memory-Bounded Agent Tools

SkillEffect is a checked‑lowering runtime that ensures agent tool calls stay within memory limits by verifying each proposed program against an immutable input before execution. It uses audited relation plugins to provide source recognition, bounded intermediate representation construction, and postconditions, while a shared runtime handles selection, bounded VM execution, and atomic capacity leasing. Experiments across six operator families show that bounded access significantly reduces peak memory usage and improves completion rates under fixed memory caps.

By Yinuo Wang, Yiyu Shi