Group-based reinforcement learning (RL) methods, such as GRPO and its variants, have become a leading paradigm for training reasoning and agentic large language models (LLMs). While their group-normal...
arXiv:2606. 11119v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) is a promising approach for enhancing reasoning and agentic behavior in large language models.
By Heming Zou, Qi Wang, Yun Qu, Yuhang Jiang, Lizhou Cai, Yixiu Mao, Ru Peng, Xin Xu, Weijie Liu, Kai Yang, Saiyong Yang, Xiangyang Ji
arXiv:2607. 06223v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning has become a promising paradigm for improving large language model (LLM) agents on long-horizon search tasks, where the agent must make a sequence of intermediate decisions before receiving a final outcome.
By Yijun Zhang, Fan Xu, Jiaxin Ding, Yule Xie, Shiqing Gao, Xin Ding, Haoxiang Zhang, Luoyi Fu, Xinbing Wang
The paper introduces Potential-Guided Policy Optimization (PGPO), a method for multi-turn agentic tasks that improves credit assignment by estimating empirical state potentials from anchor-state-group return statistics. PGPO derives action advantages from potential differences between adjacent states, enabling cross-trajectory credit propagation and finer-grained step-level credit assignment, especially within failed trajectories. Experiments on ALFWorld and WebShop demonstrate strong performance compared to recent group-based reinforcement learning methods, with negligible training overhead.
By Yuyao Zheng, Haipeng Sun, Junwei Bao, Lemao Liu, Hongfei Jiang, Yang Song, Dejing Dou
The paper introduces GRAFT, a Graph-based Faithful sTep-level credit-assignment framework that constructs a trajectory graph from rollout trajectories, recovers node state-values via Bellman iteration, and assigns step-level advantages based on node value differences. It also proposes Graph GAE to further reduce state-value estimation bias. Experiments on multi-turn agentic benchmarks demonstrate consistent improvements over GRPO and other recent agentic RL algorithms.
By Xincheng Yao, Haobo Fu, Weiming Liu, Chongyang Zhang
PGPO: Potential-Guided Policy Optimization for Multi-Turn Agentic Tasks proposes a new reinforcement learning approach that estimates empirical state potentials from anchor-state-group return statistics within each rollout group. By deriving action advantages from potential differences between adjacent states, PGPO enables cross‑trajectory credit propagation, providing finer‑grained step‑level credit assignment, especially within failed trajectories. Experiments on ALFWorld and WebShop demonstrate strong overall performance compared to recent group‑based RL methods, with negligible training overhead.
The paper introduces Reverse‑Turn Policy Optimization (RTPO), a method that restructures multi‑turn agentic reinforcement learning rollouts into sparse reverse trees and updates policies in temporal reverse order. This approach addresses three key instability sources—context mismatch, weak turn‑level credit assignment, and asynchronous policy drift—by aligning each decision with its downstream continuation. Theoretical analysis shows RTPO eliminates context mismatch and drift, reduces credit bias, and converges to recursive optimality, while experiments demonstrate performance gains of 21.50% over trajectory‑level and 10.76% over turn‑level baselines on multi‑turn agentic RL benchmarks.
By Yugu Li, Jimmy Cao, Jianglin Qiao, Siyi Hu
PlanPO introduces a group planning-aware policy optimization method for multi-turn agentic large language models, addressing the issue of advantage collapse caused by treating all successful trajectories equally. By incorporating coarse-to-fine advantage signals that reflect differences in trajectory and turn lengths, PlanPO encourages agents to learn generalizable planning and generation behaviors. Experiments show a 27.2% average improvement over GRPO on benchmarks such as ALFWorld, WebShop, and SciWorld, with minimal extra training cost.
By Dayang Liang, Liyuan He, Xuan Feng, Shuxin Li, Bo An, Yunlong Liu
arXiv:2607. 14171v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning has emerged as the dominant paradigm for training large language model (LLM) agents that interact with executable sandboxes.
By Bowei He, Yankai Chen, Xiaokun Zhang, Xue Liu
The paper introduces DCRL (Divide-and-Conquer RL), a method that recursively decomposes offline goal-conditioned reinforcement learning trajectories into a balanced binary tree. By training values from the leaves up to the root, DCRL avoids noisy max-based backups and reduces bootstrap depth from linear to logarithmic, thereby limiting error accumulation. Experiments on diverse goal-reaching tasks show that DCRL outperforms prior flat offline GCRL methods, achieving a higher average score on the most challenging long-horizon OGBench tasks.
By Hyeonseong Jeon, Youngwoon Lee
arXiv:2511.21638v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Practical LLM agents often operate over multi-turn conversations where success is determined only after the full interaction ends. Most multi-turn...
By Daniel R. Jiang, Ankur Samanta, Yukai Yang, Jalaj Bhandari, R\'emi Munos, Tyler Lu
arXiv:2605. 20256v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning has become a cornerstone for aligning and unlocking the reasoning capabilities of large-scale models.
By Xikai Zhang, Yongzhi Li, Likang Xiao, Yingze Zhang, Yanhua Cheng, Quan Chen, Peng Jiang, Wenjun Wu, Liu Liu