arXiv Machine Learning

Rethinking Self-Evolution: A Constrained Exploration-Exploitation Process for Mitigating Skill Overfitting

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.

arXiv AI
6d ago

SkillEvoReg: Regularizing Agent Skill Evolution Against Overfitting

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
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

SkillRise: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Cross-Task Skill Evolution

arXiv:2607. 26784v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model agents often encounter related yet distinct tasks that share reusable solution patterns.

By Zhiyuan Yao, Yuxin Chen, Zhengxi Lu, Zishan Xu, Yueqing Sun, Yifu Guo, Yuquan Lu, Zhengzhou Cai, Kangning Zhang, Zhuowen Han, Zi-Han Wang, Ziang Ye, Qi Gu, Xunliang Cai, Weiwen Liu, Yongliang Shen
arXiv AI
Aug 7

Search2Skill: Skill Distillation Beyond Knowledge Boundaries Via Rubric-Based Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2608. 05245v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reusable skills, which encapsulate the procedural knowledge required to solve real-world professional tasks, offer LLM-based agents a path toward self-evolution in expert domains.

By Muyang Ye, Tian Lan, Feihu Jiang, Yongshi Ye, Wuyunsiqin, Bin Zhu, Qianghuai Jia, Zhao Xu, Weihua Luo, Ye Wang, Jinyang Zhang, Longyue Wang, Lingfeng Bao
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
3d ago

Rep2Skill: Representation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents

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
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 29

SkillRise: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Cross-Task Skill Evolution

Large language model agents often encounter related yet distinct tasks that share reusable solution patterns. Yet standard agentic reinforcement learning treats tasks as independent episodes, while existing approaches to skill learning either focus on repeated attempts of one task or use pipelines with multiple stages that entangle extraction, retrieval, and execution.

arXiv AI
Sep 12

COBRA-Skills: Contextual Bandit-Guided Evolution for Agent Skill Optimization

COBRA‑Skills is a new framework that treats skill optimization for large language model agents as a budgeted sequential problem over a dynamically evolving candidate set. It uses contextual‑bandit prioritization to focus evaluations on promising or informative candidates and refines the skill population based on execution feedback. In experiments across six agent benchmarks and three target models, COBRA‑Skills outperforms existing methods, cuts optimization cost by 55–58 % compared to SkillOpt, and requires only 50 unique optimization examples per benchmark.

By Pingchen Lu, Xiangyi Wang, Xiang Li, Jie Mao, Zikun Qu, Junfeng Luo, Yao Shu, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low, Zhongxiang Dai