arXiv:2606. 32017v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agentic reinforcement learning requires assigning credit to environment-facing actions such as searches, clicks, edits, navigation commands, and object interactions.
By Yuanda Xu, Zhengze Zhou, Hejian Sang, Xiaomin Li, Jiaxin Zhang, Xinchen Du, Zhipeng Wang, Alborz Geramifard
Contrastive Branch Policy Optimization (CBPO) is a reinforcement learning method that separates the allocation of a fixed rollout budget from the translation of branch outcomes into token-level credit. It uses generation entropy to screen branch positions, path- and node-level decay to distribute the budget, and Contrastive Branch Value (CBV) to estimate local decision sensitivity without changing reward signs. CBPO partitions trajectories into non-overlapping credit segments, preventing duplicated gradients and enabling fine-grained credit assignment using only outcome rewards.
By Ying Wang, Changlin Qiu, Bang Lin, Linbo Jin, Wen Jiang, Zhe Sun, Jingli Yang
The paper introduces TASPO, a method that transforms privileged information (PI) into outcome‑grounded action credit for language‑model agents. TASPO constructs decision‑applicable PI from verified successful experience, aggregates PI‑induced likelihood shifts at the executable‑action level, and converts relative action support into positive, bounded, mean‑preserving weights on the original trajectory advantage. Experiments on three agentic benchmarks show TASPO improves over GRPO by 10.6% and generalizes better to unseen tasks, while reducing supervision mismatch and stabilizing policy optimization.
By Jingxiao Yang, Wangjie Gan, Yingxuan Zhuang, Wenqi Zhang, Jintao Chen, Xuhong Zhang
arXiv:2606. 12384v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent advances in agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL) have substantially improved the multi-turn tool-use capabilities of large language model agents.
By Xucong Wang, Ziyu Ma, Yong Wang, Yuxiang Ji, Shidong Yang, Guanhua Chen, Pengkun Wang, Xiangxiang Chu
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...
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:2606. 05885v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-horizon LLM agents require reinforcement learning methods that can assign credit to intermediate decisions under sparse and delayed rewards.
By Yuanfan Li, Qi Zhou, Wenjing Duan, Lu Chen
arXiv:2607. 25659v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Rubric-based reinforcement learning enriches language model training by evaluating model outputs against explicit criteria.
By Bo-Wen Zhang, Junwei He, Wen Wang, Song-Lin Lv, Wentao Ma, Rongyi Lin, Shuhan Zhong, Lan-Zhe Guo
arXiv:2608. 06861v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training large language model agents in long-horizon environments requires assigning credit from sparse terminal outcomes to individual actions.
By Hongxi Yan, Ziyue Huang, Shichao Fan, Qingjie Liu
arXiv:2607. 22724v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Group-based policy optimization has been increasingly used to train large language model (LLM) agents from sparse outcome rewards by comparing trajectories or steps within a group.
By Kaibing Yang, Guangfeng Cai, Shengtian Yang, Shuo He, Yu Li, Mengyi Liu, Pengwei Chen, Jun Xu, Lei Feng
The paper introduces VICT, a method that leverages the internal structure of verifiable tasks to perform fine‑grained credit assignment for long‑horizon LLM agents. VICT exposes executable or evidence‑backed atoms from a task’s terminal verifier and traces them back to actions via dependency‑valid proof edges, redistributing advantage only along these edges. This approach improves performance on ALFWorld and WebShop compared to outcome‑only training and matches recent fine‑grained credit methods without requiring additional critics, labels, or inference‑time verifier access.
By Pengcheng Li, Zhengyang Zhang, Dongxu Zhang, Sui Huang, Shaohua Ma
arXiv:2608. 05987v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) with verifiable rewards constructs trajectory-level advantage estimates, yet it often fails to credit the few pivotal decisions that determine outcomes in long-horizon, multi-turn agentic tasks.
By Zi-Han Wang, Zhengxi Lu, Zhiyuan Yao, Jinyang Wu, Jie Wu, Zhengzhou Cai, Yueqing Sun, Ziang Ye, Linji Hao, Qi Gu, Xunliang Cai, Yongliang Shen, Yujiu Yang