Large language model agents are commonly trained through reinforcement learning with sparse trajectory-level rewards, which offer limited guidance on how strongly individual tokens should be updated. On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD) addresses this by re-scoring generated tokens under a privileged replay view to obtain dense, token-level supervision.
arXiv:2608. 06243v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) improves the reasoning capabilities of large language models using automatically verifiable outcome signals, but these signals are typically sparse and at the sequence-level.
By ZhiYan Hou, Xinyu Tang, Hongyan An, Jianjin Zhang, Weizhen Wang, Yunyun Han, Gengsheng Li, Xiangzhao Hao, Haiyun Guo, Wenbin Hu, Jinqiao Wang, Yafeng Deng
arXiv:2607. 28076v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) is effective for training large language model agents.
By Binbin Zheng, Zijun Xie, Guanqun Zhao, Enlei Gong, Xing Ma, Xiaoliang Fu, Zeyu Chen
arXiv:2510.15047v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) as agents often fail to improve in new environments. We identify and characterize a failure mode we call explora...
By Shiqi Chen, Tongyao Zhu, Zian Wang, Jinghan Zhang, Kangrui Wang, Ruochen Zhou, Siyang Gao, Teng Xiao, Yee Whye Teh, Junxian He, Manling Li
RISE (Recursive Improvement via Self-Extrapolating Policy Distillation) is a new method that builds a synthetic teacher from a language model’s own RLVR training trajectory. By extrapolating the displacement between the current checkpoint and a trailing anchor in parameter or logit space, RISE transforms sparse outcome-based updates into dense token-level targets without external models or privileged conditioning. The approach recursively refines the student model, combining RLVR and on‑policy distillation, and demonstrates superior performance across mathematical reasoning, STEM, code generation, and multi‑turn agentic tasks.
By Yang Li, Semih Yavuz, Shafiq Joty
arXiv:2608. 11967v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model agents increasingly rely on long-horizon reasoning to solve complex tasks involving planning, tool use, and memory.
By Zhixin Zhang, Xinke Jiang, Zhibang Yang, Weixuan Xu, Guohong Qiu, Xu Chu, Junfeng Zhao, Yasha Wang
The paper explores Retrospection-Only Fine-Tuning (ROFT), a method where a language-model agent improves its behavior by generating and training on explanations of its own experiences, without external teachers or reward signals. In software‑engineering tasks with Qwen3.5‑4B, ROFT achieves comparable or better solve rates than GRPO while requiring fewer updates and training time, and can learn from failures alone. Behavioral analysis shows ROFT indirectly assigns credit to actions and can produce shorter, more direct solutions when prompted to focus on direct solutions.
arXiv:2609.36642v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Language-model agents are usually trained by reinforcement learning from one reward per episode, and privileged self-distillation enriches it by lettin...
By Muyang Li, Jie Yang, Zhengyu Fang, Junchao Zhu, Zhengkun Xiao, Ruining Deng, Zhe Jiang, Shigang Chen
arXiv:2607. 01480v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), along with recent selfdistillation variants such as SDPO, evaluates each rollout against a verifier and updates the policy from that episode-level signal.
By Ye Liu, Srijan Bansal, Bo Pang, Yang Li, Zeyu Leo Liu, Yifei Ming, Zixuan Ke, Shafiq Joty, Semih Yavuz
arXiv:2608. 05987v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) with verifiable rewards constructs trajectory-level advantage estimates, yet it often fails to credit the few pivotal decisions that determine outcomes in long-horizon, multi-turn agentic tasks.
By Zi-Han Wang, Zhengxi Lu, Zhiyuan Yao, Jinyang Wu, Jie Wu, Zhengzhou Cai, Yueqing Sun, Ziang Ye, Linji Hao, Qi Gu, Xunliang Cai, Yongliang Shen, Yujiu Yang
The paper introduces Feedback‑Enriched Environments (FEEs) as a new approach to training large language models as autonomous agents for long‑horizon tasks. By shifting from action guidance to observation enrichment during later stages of exploration, FEEs improve performance across SciWorld and BFCL benchmarks with various Qwen3 model scales and RL algorithms. The study shows that FEEs stabilize training, promote proactive exploration, embed environmental guidance into policy weights, and highlight intra‑group feedback consistency as key for stable optimization.
By Hongbang Yuan, Zhuoran Jin, Yixin Cao
arXiv:2609.38142v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: A small trainable advisor can steer a frozen language-model executor using natural-language advice. In addition to learning from task rewards, the advi...
By Rishabh Agrawal, Hejie Cui, Shasha Li, Shanchan Wu, Sercan \"{O}. Ar{\i}k