The paper introduces SkillPivot, a framework that guides large language model agents to improve their natural-language skills by focusing on the point where a successful solution path deviates into an error. SkillPivot identifies this transition using execution validity, goal progress, and action diversity, then employs a stronger teacher to generate a successful alternative from the same prefix. By contrasting the failed and successful suffixes, the method produces localized, compact skill updates that preserve existing effective guidance and outperform other skill-evolution approaches on multiple benchmarks.
arXiv:2607. 01874v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Skills are becoming a reusable operational layer for LLM agents, encoding SOPs, domain rules, tool workflows, scripts, and validation routines.
By Jiayin Zhu, Kelong Mao, Yudong Guo, Dengbo He, Sulong Xu, Simiu Gu, Yutao Yue
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
Rep2Skill introduces a representation-guided framework that enables large language model agents to self-evolve their textual skills by analyzing internal representation trajectories from agent rollouts. The method identifies execution turns that deviate from successful dynamics and uses these signals, together with execution contexts, as actionable feedback for targeted skill revision. Experiments with two open-source LLMs across two agent environments demonstrate that Rep2Skill consistently outperforms purely text-based approaches, showing that incorporating internal representations can enhance agent self-improvement.
By Kaixing Zhang, Changming Li, Yingdong Shi, Zheng Zhang, Kaitao Song, Wenjie Shi, Jingang Wang, Kan Ren
arXiv:2605.08693v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Skills provide an effective mechanism for improving LLM agents on complex tasks, yet in existing agent frameworks, their creation, refinement, and...
By Min Yang, Jinghua Piao, Xu Xia, Xiaochong Lan, Jiaju Chen, Yongshun Gong, Yong Li
The paper introduces RuHarness, a framework that co‑evolves rubrics and harnesses to enable continual self‑improvement of autonomous agents that rely on large language models. RuHarness automatically discovers and reassesses behavioral criteria from execution trajectories, prioritizes unresolved weaknesses, and uses these insights to guide targeted harness updates while keeping the task objective unchanged. Experiments across varied agent tasks and backbone models demonstrate that RuHarness outperforms existing harness‑evolution baselines, especially on unseen held‑out tasks, and that its adaptive rubric prioritization supports sustained improvement and stable generalization over successive evolution rounds.
By Hao Chen, Yukun Yan, Ziyu Han, Ye He, Chuanzhe Guo, Shangzhan Li, Qi Shi, Qingfu Zhu, Maosong Sun, Wanxiang Che
arXiv:2608. 05628v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Although agent skills equip LLMs with reusable procedural knowledge, manual maintenance suffers from high costs, unscalability, and misalignment.
By Yuru Feng, Yaoqi Chen, Beidi Zhao, Qianxi Zhang, Xinjiang Wang, Jianan Lu, Zhirui Wang, Shusen Xu, Zengzhong Li, Qi Chen
arXiv:2608. 16544v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agents increasingly rely on reusable skills to encode task knowledge, tool-use procedures, and validation rules.
By Jianming Chen, Xuanbin Ye, Yawen Wang, Junjie Wang, Qing Wang, Fanjiang XU
Although agent skills equip LLMs with reusable procedural knowledge, manual maintenance suffers from high costs, unscalability, and misalignment. Real-world deployments thus require autonomous, on-demand skill evolution at test time, constrained by limited interaction budgets and a lack of training or validation sets.
arXiv:2609.36626v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Language-model agents increasingly rely on persistent natural-language skills to adapt beyond their frozen model parameters. When a shared skill is rep...
By Ziyu Liu, Jun Chen, Lixu Wang
arXiv:2609.08944v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Agent skills provide a lightweight way to equip frozen language-model agents with domain knowledge and procedural guidance, yet obtaining high-quality...
By Gaoyuan Li, Meihao Fan, Yizhe Liu, Shaolei Zhang, Ju Fan, Siyi Wang, Jiaheng Hou, Xudong Weng, Honghan Tian, Zang Li
The paper introduces Procedural Graphs, a framework that structures procedural knowledge for large language model agents as (procedure, relation, procedure) triplets, analogous to knowledge graphs for factual data. At each decision point, a guidance model uses the local subgraph to bias the agent’s next action, while an LLM refiner self‑evolves the graph by comparing failed and successful trajectories, editing its topology to improve performance. Experiments across various datasets, tasks, and LLMs show that Procedural Graphs consistently outperform memory‑based baselines, and the self‑evolution mechanism further enhances results without manual engineering.
By Yuxing Lu, Yicheng Chen, Shanchan Wu, Sercan \"{O}. Ar{\i}k