arXiv AI

Recurrent Harness for Agentic Continual Learning

ReHarness is a recurrent harness framework designed for agentic continual learning, enabling language model agents to adapt online to distribution shifts. It augments forward read/write operations with backward revision, using feedback from each instance’s trajectory to refine the harness state. Experiments on three continual learning benchmarks and multiple language model backbones show that ReHarness outperforms baseline methods, producing source‑grounded revisions that improve stability and plasticity.

arXiv Machine Learning
6d ago

From a Prompt to Repertoires: Evolving Functional REpertoires Enable LLM Continual Learning

The paper introduces Evolving Functional REpertoires (EFRE), a method that replaces a single prompt with a dynamic set of functions to enable large language models to learn new tasks sequentially without forgetting. EFRE refines existing functions when updates are compatible and creates new ones when updates conflict, thereby mitigating catastrophic forgetting and overfitting. Experiments on a three‑task continual‑learning stream show EFRE outperforms GRPO by 7.50 percentage points and reduces performance drop on a subsequent task by only 1.56 percentage points compared to base prompt optimization.

By Fengyuan Liu, Yue Wang, Hangxi Guo, Fengyuan Liu, Chenxu Wu, Yanguang Liu, Mengnan Du
arXiv AI
Aug 20

Harness Continual Learning: Continual Adaptation Beyond Model Parameters

The paper introduces Harness Continual Learning (HCL), a paradigm where an agent’s state evolves through prompts, memories, tools, skills, and routing rules while keeping the underlying foundation model frozen. HCL defines harness-level forgetting and proposes a guarded evolution process involving a Continual Optimizer and Evaluator to ensure improvements without losing prior behavior. Experiments across textual reasoning, multimodal perception, and open‑world interaction show over 10% performance gains and demonstrate how the stability–plasticity trade‑off can be explicitly tuned.

By Borui Kang, Jinrui Gu, Junhan Lv, Wenbin Li, Lei Wang, Yang Gao
arXiv AI
Sep 7

MePo++: Unifying Representation Refinement and Reconciliation for General Continual Learning

MePo++ is a post‑training framework designed for general continual learning (GCL) that unifies representation refinement and reconciliation. It introduces MetaPrep, which enhances representation plasticity via unsupervised meta‑refinement on pseudo continual sequences, and StreamAlign, which maintains stability by reconciling online features with a stable pretrained geometry. Experiments across various pretrained models, datasets, and continual learning baselines show that MePo++ consistently improves performance in PTM‑based GCL.

By Guanglong Sun, Kanglei Zhou, Liyuan Wang, Qi Cheng, Hongwei Yan, Shuang Cui, Hang Su, Jun Zhu, Yi Zhong