Deep search requires agents to answer complex questions through multi-step web search, browsing, evidence comparison, and synthesis. A central challenge is deciding how to search when several directions look plausible but only some will later lead to reliable evidence.
arXiv:2609.01294v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Deep-research agents answer complex questions by interacting with search and browsing tools, yet they often search along a single evolving trajectory....
By Ruochen Zhou, Zhengyu Chen, Luan Zhang, Siyang Gao, Yee Whye Teh, Shiqi Chen
The paper introduces Agentic Reasoning for Tree Search (ARTS), a method that uses a reasoning language model to navigate the hypothesis‑experiment space in scientific discovery. Unlike traditional approaches that conflate hypothesis quality with execution quality and prune search logs, ARTS evaluates prior execution logs to distinguish implementation failures from poor hypotheses and selects the next hypothesis to pursue. By employing test‑time training to embed search‑tree knowledge into model weights, ARTS achieves a 15.3% relative improvement over leading algorithms on 22 benchmark tasks and enables smaller models like Qwen3‑4B to match or exceed the performance of larger closed‑source models at lower inference cost.
By Gurusha Juneja, Arnav Kumar Jain, Deepak Nathani, William Yang Wang, Xin Eric Wang
arXiv:2606. 11926v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Scientific progress depends on a repeated loop of exploration, experimentation, and abstraction.
By Jiajie Jin, Yuyang Hu, Kai Qiu, Qi Dai, Chong Luo, Guanting Dong, Xiaoxi Li, Tong Zhao, Xiaolong Ma, Gongrui Zhang, Zhirong Wu, Bei Liu, Zhengyuan Yang, Linjie Li, Lijuan Wang, Hongjin Qian, Yutao Zhu, Zhicheng Dou
The paper introduces Strategy Accumulation and Guided Execution (SAGE), a two-stage framework that makes automated fine-tuning of large language models cumulative. In the first stage, a multi-agent pipeline uses Monte Carlo Tree Search to explore training strategies while a Distillation Agent records task-specific insights and cross-task confidence scores into a structured repository. In the second stage, SAGE retrieves relevant experience from this repository to guide training on new tasks, achieving a 12.4‑percentage‑point improvement over a baseline pipeline without accumulated experience on nine unseen tasks.
By Haoran Zhao, Wei Du, Dingwen Yang, Jixuan Huang, Junlin Shang, Lingyong Fang, Ya Guo, Tao Gui, Qi Zhang, Xuanjing Huang
Scientific progress depends on a repeated loop of exploration, experimentation, and abstraction. Researchers test candidate directions, interpret the evidence, and carry the resulting lessons into later attempts.
arXiv:2608. 10676v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-based search agents answer questions through multi-step interactions with external environments.
By Aijun Yang, Qianxue Guo, Ziyi Huang, Yuxuan Chen, Shiyou Qian, Jian Cao
Recent systems for optimizing prompts, programs, and ML workflows typically rely on explicit outer-loop controllers such as evolutionary search, bandits, or textual-gradient methods. We ask a fundamentally different question: how much of this search policy can be internalized by a single tool-using agent?
arXiv:2608. 08677v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Skill evolution improves agent skills through feedback over time, with failed trajectories often providing informative signals by revealing incomplete or misleading behaviors.
By Yanwei Ren, Haotian Zhang, Likang Xiao, Jiaxing Huang, Jiayan Qiu, Baosheng Yu, Quan Chen, Liu Liu
arXiv:2608. 06714v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent systems for optimizing prompts, programs, and ML workflows typically rely on explicit outer-loop controllers such as evolutionary search, bandits, or textual-gradient methods.
By Junbo Li, Boyi Liu, Canwen Xu, Yite Wang, Yuxiong He, Zhangyang Wang, Qiang Liu, Zhewei Yao
arXiv:2608. 05628v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Although agent skills equip LLMs with reusable procedural knowledge, manual maintenance suffers from high costs, unscalability, and misalignment.
By Yuru Feng, Yaoqi Chen, Beidi Zhao, Qianxi Zhang, Xinjiang Wang, Jianan Lu, Zhirui Wang, Shusen Xu, Zengzhong Li, Qi Chen
The paper introduces ExTS, a tree‑search policy designed for budget‑constrained agentic search where evaluation and generation costs are high. ExTS treats expansion as a value‑of‑information decision, combining discriminative reward shaping, a stochastic virtual child, and quality‑conditioned branching to allocate budget more effectively. Experiments on prompt optimization, code generation, molecular structure elucidation, and agentic workflow optimization show ExTS matching or surpassing task‑specific baselines with an average gain of +5.5% using a single configuration, and the authors also present pilot‑run diagnostics to guide adaptation to different problem structures.
By Haoyang Fang, Bernie Wang