arXiv Machine Learning

VERA: Verifiable Feasibility Representations with Counterfactual Credit for Constrained Multi-Agent Control

arXiv AI
Sep 1

Reconciling Process Supervision with Outcome-Based Credit in Agentic Policy Optimization

The paper introduces TASPO, a method that transforms privileged information (PI) into outcome‑grounded action credit for language‑model agents. TASPO constructs decision‑applicable PI from verified successful experience, aggregates PI‑induced likelihood shifts at the executable‑action level, and converts relative action support into positive, bounded, mean‑preserving weights on the original trajectory advantage. Experiments on three agentic benchmarks show TASPO improves over GRPO by 10.6% and generalizes better to unseen tasks, while reducing supervision mismatch and stabilizing policy optimization.

By Jingxiao Yang, Wangjie Gan, Yingxuan Zhuang, Wenqi Zhang, Jintao Chen, Xuhong Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

VICT: Verifier-Instrumented Credit Tracing for Long-Horizon LLM Agent Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces VICT, a method that leverages the internal structure of verifiable tasks to perform fine‑grained credit assignment for long‑horizon LLM agents. VICT exposes executable or evidence‑backed atoms from a task’s terminal verifier and traces them back to actions via dependency‑valid proof edges, redistributing advantage only along these edges. This approach improves performance on ALFWorld and WebShop compared to outcome‑only training and matches recent fine‑grained credit methods without requiring additional critics, labels, or inference‑time verifier access.

By Pengcheng Li, Zhengyang Zhang, Dongxu Zhang, Sui Huang, Shaohua Ma
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 26

Reinforcement Learning without Ground-Truth Solutions can Improve LLMs

arXiv:2606. 27369v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for training LLMs typically rely on ground-truth answers to assign rewards, limiting their applicability to tasks where the ground-truth solution is unknown.

By Yingyu Lin, Qiyue Gao, Nikki Lijing Kuang, Xunpeng Huang, Kun Zhou, Tongtong Liang, Zhewei Yao, Yi-An Ma, Yuxiong He
arXiv AI
4d ago

Targeting Pivotal Decisions for Credit Assignment in Agentic Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2609.36178v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) has become a promising approach for training large language model agents. However, its uniform assignment o...

By Dongwon Jung, Hemanth Neelgund Ramesh, Yifan Wang, Xiaomin Li, Yuexing Hao, Yu Hu, Muhao Chen, Varun Chandrasekaran, Andrzej Banburski-Fahey, Jaron Lanier
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

Differentiable Policy Transport over Multi-Layer Network Feasibility Geometry

The paper introduces Network Feasibility Geometry Reinforcement Learning (NFG‑RL), a method that enforces multi‑layer network constraints—such as interference, power‑rate coupling, flow conservation, service chains, capacity, latency, and reliability—by transporting a proto‑policy through a differentiable feasibility map. By compiling heterogeneous constraints into typed residual blocks and using a variational transport operator, NFG‑RL ensures almost‑sure feasible execution and shapes exploration and gradients to respect active constraints. Experiments on two wireless‑edge surrogate environments show that NFG‑RL boosts feasible utility by 37.5–41.5 %, cuts raw‑action violations by 48.5–60.8 %, and reduces P99 delay by 57.0–75.5 % compared to leading baselines.

By Zuyuan Zhang, Zeyu Fang, Mahdi Imani, Nathaniel D. Bastian, Tian Lan
arXiv AI
Jun 16

Direction-Conditioned Policies via Compositional Subgoal Scoring for Online Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606. 16515v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory implies that the optimal goal-conditioned action depends on the goal only through the gradient of the goal-reaching distance at the current state, yet standard online GCRL still conditions the actor on the raw goal -- a signal that is geometrically uninformative when the goal is far from the data distribution.

By Swaminathan S K, Damiya Gondha, Theyanesh Eswaramoorthy Rajahkrishnan, Aritra Hazra