arXiv AI

A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents

The paper introduces SkillPivot, a framework that guides large language model agents to evolve their skills by pinpointing the exact moment a useful problem‑solving sequence turns into an erroneous suffix. SkillPivot uses execution validity, goal progress, and action diversity to detect this deviation point, 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, outperforming other skill‑evolution techniques on benchmarks such as ToolQA, LogicBench, and WildClawBench.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 25

When Not to Imitate: Boundary-Aware Skill Memory for Reliable Tool-Use LLM Agents

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 AI
Sep 10

Procedural Graphs: Self-Evolving Execution Structures for LLM Agents

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