SkillEvoReg is a regularization framework designed to mitigate overfitting in language-model agents that evolve reusable external skills. It combines training-time skill dropout, complexity-aware local regularization, and causal counterexample validation to control skill-state growth and detect regressions. Applied across SkillOpt, SkillEvolBench, and ContinualSkillBench, it preserves downstream performance while improving transfer and later-stage evolution outcomes.
By Guanyu Nie, Fangzhou Zhu, Shixiong Kai, Xiongwei Han, Tao Zhong, Mingxuan Yuan
CausalEvo is a method that enables large language model agents in health to evolve their textual skills—such as calculation rules and measurement units—by evaluating the causal impact of skill changes while keeping model weights, feedback cases, and rule count constant. The approach freezes the LLM to propose candidate rules, pools them with existing skills, and uses paired skill replacements scored on shared feedback to rank and retain the most effective rules. In experiments on six MedCalc-Bench-Verified tasks, CausalEvo achieved 60.00% accuracy, outperforming SkillOpt (55.83%) and a no‑skill baseline (51.67%), while also reducing training token usage by 55.6%.
whyItMatters":"CausalEvo demonstrates that controlled, causal evaluation of skill updates can improve health‑focused LLM performance and efficiency, directly benefiting the reliability and resource usage of medical language agents."
By Yuchen Zhang
arXiv:2608. 02636v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Self-evolving skill systems promise to improve agents by turning execution feedback into persistent skill updates without changing the underlying model.
By Yuxuan Liu, Zhaochen Su, Yuhao Zhang, Jiahe Guo, Zhongwei Xie, Huihao Jing, Lingyun Xie, Qing Zong, Yauwai Yim, Zhixiong Zhang, Haoran Li, Yangqiu Song
arXiv:2606. 14239v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent skills are structured procedural packages that guide frozen LLM agents in specialized workflows.
By Haowen Gao, Haoran Chen, Can Wang, Shasha Guo, Liang Pang, Zhaoyang Liu, Huawei Shen, Xueqi Cheng
arXiv:2608.21606v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Machine unlearning aims to remove the influence of targeted training data from a model while preserving its remaining capabilities, but evaluating whet...
By Ayush Gupta, Hima Varshini Surisetty, Sreevidya Bollineni, Varad Ingale, Tuhina Tripathi, Abhishek Lalwani, Somya Chatterjee, Sadid Hasan
The paper introduces Boundary-Aware Skill Memory (BASM), a method that enriches skill memories for large language model agents with explicit boundary fields such as applicability conditions, risk cues, avoidance rules, and recovery notes. This approach transforms retrieved skills from unconditional templates into state‑conditioned guidance, preventing the Skill Imitation Trap where more skills lead to incorrect tool usage. Experiments on three agent benchmarks and four model scales show that BASM improves task success rates, accuracy, and reduces attack success while cutting average steps compared to memory‑free baselines.
By Zihan Lin, Zhenyu Chen, Jiawen Wei, Xiaohan Wang, Jie Cao, Jiajun Chai, Wei Lin, Guojun Yin, Ran He
arXiv:2609.39148v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: AI agents can externalize what they learn from past tasks into reusable \emph{skills}, such as procedures, checklists, code, or other executable artifa...
By Xihao Piao, Zifeng Wang, Zhen Chen
arXiv:2608. 14036v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Skills have emerged as a practical and effective approach for enhancing LLM agents at inference time through structured packages of knowledge.
By Zhiyuan Jiang, Fangrui Huang, Hanwen Xing, Xander Wu, Yipeng Gao, Rui Cao, Mengdi Wang, Shilong Liu, Yijiang Li
RSI-Opt introduces Recursive Self-Improvement Optimizer Agents that evolve their own training policies by accumulating knowledge from previous runs, including prompts, playbooks, optimizer code, and decision cadences. A meta‑agent rewrites and archives these policies, enabling reusable procedures and code that adapt to new tasks. Across multiple generations and tasks, RSI‑Opt improves optimizer performance, achieving higher z‑scores on evolution suites, better cross‑model transfer, and significant error reductions on PDE benchmarks compared to fixed‑prompt baselines.
By Binghang Lu, Yige Sun, Guang Lin
arXiv:2607. 26643v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Enabling large language model (LLM) agents to accumulate and reuse experience from past interactions remains a central challenge in real-world applications.
By Hongqiang Lin, Chao Liu, Xiaofan Bai, Xuan Jin, Yuhong Li, Nenggan Zheng, Xipeng Cao
arXiv:2606. 07532v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: RLHF-trained models are systematically biased toward agreement over accuracy, a structural property of the training process.
By Sam Ryan
arXiv:2606. 15390v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM agents can improve without weight updates by accumulating natural-language skills from experience, but current systems entrust every decision about which skills to keep and how to apply them to LLM judgment alone.
By Yixuan Wang, Yiyang Zhou, Yiming Liang, Congyu Zhang, Fuxiao Liu, Jiawei Zhou, Huaxiu Yao