MemSkill redefines memory operations in large language model agents as learnable and evolvable skills, enabling agents to extract, consolidate, and prune information from interaction traces more flexibly. It uses a controller to select relevant skills, an LLM-based executor to generate skill-guided memories, and a designer that reviews failures to refine or add new skills, forming a closed‑loop improvement cycle. Experiments on datasets such as LoCoMo, LongMemEval, HotpotQA, and ALFWorld show that MemSkill outperforms strong baselines and generalizes across settings, while analyses reveal how skills evolve over time.
By Haozhen Zhang, Quanyu Long, Jianzhu Bao, Tao Feng, Weizhi Zhang, Haodong Yue, Wenya Wang
arXiv:2604. 01687v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Anthropic proposes the concept of skills for LLM agents to tackle multi-step professional tasks that simple tool invocations cannot address.
By Hanrong Zhang (Steve), Shicheng Fan (Steve), Henry Peng Zou (Steve), Yankai Chen (Steve), Zhenting Wang (Steve), Jiayu Zhou (Steve), Chengze Li (Steve), Wei-Chieh Huang (Steve), Yifei Yao (Steve), Kening Zheng (Steve), Xue (Steve), Liu, Xiaoxiao Li, Philip S. Yu
arXiv:2608. 03874v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern agent frameworks equip large language models with external skill libraries to solve complex tasks.
By Tianyi Guan, Yiding Wang, Haotong Yang, Siyuan Cao, Shirui Liu, Yi Hu, Jiaqi Li, Muhan Zhang
WikiSkill is a framework that separates raw execution experience, accumulated knowledge, and executable skills, continuously consolidating experience into a persistent knowledge base (wiki). By co‑evolving agent skills with this wiki, the method consistently outperforms state‑of‑the‑art skill‑evolution techniques across diverse benchmarks and models. The study shows that larger models benefit more from evolved skills, smaller models can outperform larger ones when equipped with skills, and that skills transfer effectively across model families, with the wiki’s persistent knowledge being critical for success.
By Liyan Tang, Cyrus Rashtchian, Chun-Sung Ferng, Andrew Tomkins, Da-Cheng Juan, Tu Vu
arXiv:2606. 17819v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agent skills -- structured, reusable knowledge artifacts that augment LLM agent capabilities -- have been rapidly adopted in industry, yet their cross-domain impact and use across commercial and open-source models remain under-studied, and no reusable methodology exists for evaluating an individual skill.
By Maksim Shaposhnikov, Nicolas Fortuin, Simon Stipcich, Maria I. Gorinova, Amy Heineike, Rob Willoughby
arXiv:2606. 01314v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent self-evolving agents have shown that skills can be discovered, refined, and accumulated through execution.
By Yangbo Wei, Zhen Huang, Shaoqiang Lu, Junhong Qian, Qifan Wang, Chen Wu, Lei He
arXiv:2604. 08377v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents such as OpenClaw rely on reusable skills to perform complex tasks, yet these skills remain largely static after deployment.
By Ziyu Ma, Shidong Yang, Yuxiang Ji, Xucong Wang, Yong Wang, Yiming Hu, Tongwen Huang, Xiangxiang Chu
The paper introduces Boundary-Aware Skill Memory (BASM), a method that enriches skill memories for large language model agents with explicit boundary fields such as applicability conditions, risk cues, avoidance rules, and recovery notes. This approach transforms retrieved skills from unconditional templates into state‑conditioned guidance, preventing the Skill Imitation Trap where more skills lead to incorrect tool usage. Experiments on three agent benchmarks and four model scales show that BASM improves task success rates, accuracy, and reduces attack success while cutting average steps compared to memory‑free baselines.
By Zihan Lin, Zhenyu Chen, Jiawen Wei, Xiaohan Wang, Jie Cao, Jiajun Chai, Wei Lin, Guojun Yin, Ran He
Modern agent frameworks equip large language models with external skill libraries to solve complex tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these systems can effectively evolve their skills and whether the resulting skills improve task-solving capabilities.
arXiv:2606. 03692v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent AI agents can flexibly invoke skills to solve complex tasks, but their long-term improvement is fundamentally constrained by a lack of systematic skill construction, accumulation, and transfer.
By Yuan Xiong, Ziqi Miao, Qian Chen, Lijun Li, Yequan Wang, Shizhu He, Jun Zhao, Kang Liu
arXiv:2606. 01139v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent skills are procedural artifacts that enable LLM agents to execute workflows, verify constraints, and recover from failures.
By Yuxuan Liu, Zhaochen Su, Lingyun Xie, Yuhao Zhang, Qing Zong, Jiahe Guo, Zhongwei Xie, Yiyan Ji, Yauwai Yim, Hongyu Luo, Xiyu Ren, Ruan Chenyu, Haoran Li, Yangqiu Song
arXiv:2610.34043v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Autonomous agents are increasingly deployed across sequences of related tasks, yet they often fail to retain and improve their knowledge over time. E...
By Wenzhe Fan, Benjamin Steenhoek, Gaurav Mittal, Yu Hu