arXiv AI

From Migration to Calibration: Aligning Agents with Deployment Requirements

The paper proposes a framework for aligning AI agents with deployment requirements through a process called calibration, which avoids the need for source imitation or universal superiority. It introduces three families of requirements—basic capability, technical precision, and user context—alongside a versioned mapping to manage changes. The authors outline four instruments (benchmarks, examples, skills, and role-conditioned cost/utility) that provide tunable reward channels within a fixed acceptance contract, and describe methods for adaptation, qualification, and evaluation, noting that confirmatory validation remains outstanding.

arXiv AI
Oct 5

From Migration to Calibration: Preserving Agent Capabilities across Models, Jurisdictions, and Scale

The paper proposes a framework for agent calibration that ensures consistent capabilities when agents are deployed, migrated, or scaled across different models, harnesses, infrastructures, and user contexts. It defines standards for basic capabilities, technical environments, and user contexts, diagnoses gaps, applies revisions, and rechecks within fixed budgets, using diagnostic source behavior and mandatory tests to qualify agents. The framework includes semantic checkpoints, repair localization, and reusable configuration artifacts, and outlines an automatic calibration tool that relies on limited authorized user trajectories and tests, though empirical validation remains pending.

By Yaxiao Liu (PwC China AI Center), Pengbo Liu (PwC China AI Center), Yiwen Liu (PwC China AI Center), Yihua Guan (PwC China AI Center), Jiaxing Song (Tsinghua University)
arXiv AI
Aug 24

Evaluating Skills, Not Just Agents: Agentic Continuous Evaluation of Skills

The paper introduces ACES (Agentic Continuous Evaluation of Skills), a framework that evaluates reusable skills and capability packages by running paired live trials with and without a target skill, normalizing results into the Agent Trajectory Interchange Format (ATIF), and grading six runtime metrics to compute Skill Lift. ACES demonstrates that scan-only gates miss important aspects of skill performance, while the evaluation protocol reveals significant improvements in skill execution, behavior check, and skill efficiency across 145 real skills and 947 scored cases. The open‑source NVIDIA SkillEvaluator implementation enables reproducible, repository‑native assessment of agentic skills in production environments.

By Christopher Kevin, Narendran Raghavan, Jean-Francois Puget, Roshni Malani, Meghana Puvvadi, Moshe Abramovitch, Mohit Gupta, Rama Akkiraju, Subodh Prabhu, Yogesh Dangi, Wei Luo, Seong Hee Lee
arXiv AI
Oct 2

From Proposal to Verified Effect: Praxa, an Evidence-Bound Harness for Governed AI Agent Execution

Praxa is an evidence‑bound harness for governed AI agent execution that explicitly represents states such as proposal, authority, dispatch, verified external effect, and promotion through deterministic admission, brokered execution, external read‑back, reconciliation, and reviewed promotion. The authors report four evidence lanes: a repository‑local audit passing all unit and Workerd tests; a pilot on 12 curated tasks where both baseline and reliability‑layer arms passed 17 of 36 trials; a coordination‑proxy comparison where both baseline and a source‑authored candidate completed all 180 trials with equal accuracy but the candidate used fewer tokens and steps; and deployed source/configuration evidence showing bounded reflection, recall accounting, memory compilation, and tool‑health paths. None of the evidence demonstrates superiority in security, safety, or user benefit. whyItMatters:"Praxa provides a testable architecture that makes authority‑to‑effect transitions explicit, offering a framework for verifying AI agent behavior, though current evidence does not prove improved security or performance."

By Stefan G. Creadore
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 30

Frozen Judges, Moving Agents: Version-Dependent LLM-Judge Error and the Limits of Judge-Assisted Agent Evaluation

The paper investigates how language‑model judges can make version‑dependent errors when evaluating upgraded agents. Using 35 public coding‑agent submissions, two customer‑service agents, and over a thousand expert‑labeled trajectories, the authors show that fixed judges often reject task‑conditioned error invariance and can incorrectly approve failed patches, especially as agent capability increases. Paired audits of current outputs reduce interval width only marginally, and the study concludes that independent human patch review is still necessary.

By Jiapeng Li
arXiv AI
Oct 1

NAQD Env: A benchmark for selective withdrawal in language agents

The paper introduces NAQD‑Env, a synthetic benchmark designed to test language agents’ ability to selectively withdraw and resume actions when new evidence, permissions, or stop instructions arise. It evaluates models against a deterministic reference policy across eleven dependency families, measuring policy agreement, task value, withdrawal, resumption, and event reporting. Experiments on 350 scenarios show low withdrawal recall, no valid resumption, and limited policy alignment, highlighting the need to treat selective withdrawal as a distinct reliability component.

By Mohamed Abouzahra
arXiv AI
Oct 16

Learning When to Withdraw: Curriculum Coverage and Rule-Specific Failures in Fine-Tuned Language Agents

The paper investigates how fine‑tuned language agents can selectively withdraw actions when evidence changes or authority is revoked. Using a synthetic NAQD‑Env environment, the authors compare an original curriculum with an enriched one across multiple system‑prompt framings and evaluate four LoRA checkpoints of Qwen2.5‑3B‑Instruct against instruction‑tuned baselines. Results show that fine‑tuned checkpoints achieve higher decision agreement and withdrawal recall, reduce incorrect withdrawals, and narrow prohibited combinations, though they also omit valid event reports and exhibit mixed preservation of authorized actions.

By Mohamed Abouzahra