The paper introduces Effect-Marginal Policy Optimization (EMPO), a method that addresses credit-update misalignment in multi-turn reinforcement learning for large language model agents. EMPO aligns policy updates with execution-level equivalence by using an effect-level surrogate that couples updates across different textual responses that produce the same effect. Experiments on ALFWorld, WebShop, and Sokoban demonstrate that EMPO improves both task performance and learning efficiency compared to strong baselines.
By Shaojin Ma, Ruitao Wang, Pengyi Li, Jie Yang, Liangyu Chen, Gangyi Zhao, Hongyao Tang, Yan Zheng, Jianye Hao
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: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
Agentic reinforcement learning (RL) enables large language models (LLMs) to learn from multi-turn interactions with verifiable outcomes. Textual skills can improve exploration by distilling prior inte...
arXiv:2608. 16156v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-horizon large language model (LLM) agents are typically optimized with sparse terminal outcomes, making fine-grained credit assignment across multi-step interactions difficult.
By Huan Zhang, Mingju Chen, Dongxu Zhou, Can Lv, Heng Chang, Sen Cui, Faguo Wu, Shiji Zhou
arXiv:2610.19380v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: User feedback enables LLMs to refine reusable personalized skills, but often mixes persistent preferences with request-specific corrections. Indiscrimi...
By Li Wang, Chen Zhang, Yirong Yang, Xingyu Chen, Jinkun Zhao, Tianhao Peng, Wenjun Wu
arXiv:2606. 03980v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reward models (RMs) provide critical feedback signals for LLM post-training, notably in reinforced fine-tuning (RFT) and reinforcement learning (RL) pipelines.
By Tao Chen, Gangwei Jiang, Pengyu Cheng, Siyuan Huang, Yihao Liu, Jingwei Ni, Jiaqi Guo, Mengyu Zhou, Kai Tang, Junling Liu, Qinliang Su, Xiaoxi Jiang, Guanjun Jiang
arXiv:2510. 05342v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a simple and effective method for aligning large language models.
By Hyung Gyu Rho
Long-horizon large language model (LLM) agents are typically optimized with sparse terminal outcomes, making fine-grained credit assignment across multi-step interactions difficult. Existing approache...
Reward models (RMs) provide critical feedback signals for LLM post-training, notably in reinforced fine-tuning (RFT) and reinforcement learning (RL) pipelines. However, current reward evaluation relies on heterogeneous criteria such as rule-based verifiers, ground-truth references, procedural checklists, and complex rubrics, where a unified mechanism to integrate all types of evidence remains unexplored.
arXiv:2607. 10601v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) agents are commonly trained from expert trajectories using supervised fine-tuning (SFT), which treats multi-turn agent behavior as ordinary text imitation.
By Yixiong Chen, Alan Yuille
The paper introduces Training-Free Task Vectors (TFTVs), a method for computing task-vector-like directions in large language models without fine‑tuning. TFTVs map activation steering vectors to rank‑one weight‑space edits using only forward‑pass statistics, enabling arithmetic operations such as learning, forgetting, and composing edits. Experiments show that TFTVs consistently amplify, suppress, and combine target behaviors while preserving general knowledge, outperforming other editing and steering baselines.
By Gabriel J. Perin, Lucas Boscaini, Andr\'e Araujo, Nina S. T. Hirata