arXiv AI

RL Post-Training Builds Compositional Reasoning Strategies

arXiv:2607. 07646v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Does RL post-training merely amplify primitive skills already latent in a base model, or can it compose primitive skills into new higher-level strategies?

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 17

From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning

arXiv:2606. 18089v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Post-training pipelines that combine supervised fine-tuning (SFT) with reinforcement learning (RL) have emerged as the key recipe for transforming large language models (LLMs) into robust reasoners.

By Lingjing Kong, Xin Liu, Guangyi Chen, Martin Q. Ma, Xiangchen Song, Yuekai Sun, Mikhail Yurochkin, Taylor W. Killian, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Kun Zhang, Eric P. Xing, Zhengzhong Liu
arXiv AI
Aug 11

How Much Backtracking is Enough? Exploring the Interplay of SFT and RL in Enhancing LLM Reasoning

arXiv:2505. 24273v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) suggest that reinforcement learning (RL) effectively internalizes search strategies, yielding significant improvements on challenging reasoning tasks through extended chains of thought.

By Hongyi James Cai, Junlin Wang, Xiaoyin Chen, Bhuwan Dhingra
arXiv AI
Jun 26

NebulaExp-8B: An Empirical Post-Training Pipeline via Full-Scale Ablation Research

arXiv:2606. 26671v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Post-training alignment determines the reasoning and human preference following capabilities of large language models, yet most existing works withhold detailed data construction, filtering rules and training recipes, which hinders community reproducibility and lightweight model optimization.

By Qiaobo Hao, Yangqian Wu, Shunyi Wang, Zhongjian Zhang, Ziqun Li, Yayin He, Muqing Li, Chen Zhong
arXiv AI
Jul 16

Representation-Based Exploration for Language Models: From Test-Time to Post-Training

arXiv:2510. 11686v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) promises to expand the capabilities of language models, but it is unclear if current RL techniques promote the discovery of novel behaviors, or simply sharpen those already present in the base model.

By Jens Tuyls, Dylan J. Foster, Akshay Krishnamurthy, Jordan T. Ash
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 29

Learning to Reason with Curriculum II: Compositional Generalization

arXiv:2606. 27721v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Compositional generalization, the ability to solve complex problems by combining solutions to simpler sub-problems, is a fundamental capability of both natural and artificial intelligence, and a key mechanism underlying chain-of-thought reasoning.

By Nived Rajaraman, Audrey Huang, Miroslav Dudik, Robert Schapire, Dylan Foster, Akshay Krishnamurthy
arXiv AI
Jun 2

ReSkill: Reconciling Skill Creation with Policy Optimization in Agentic RL

arXiv:2606. 01619v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agentic reinforcement learning (RL) enables LLM agents to improve continuously from environment rewards, yet the resulting policies do not systematically accumulate reusable strategies that generalize across tasks.

By Zelin He, Haotian Lin, Boran Han, Wei Zhu, Haoyang Fang, Bernie Wang, Xuan Zhu, Runze Li, Matthew Reimherr
arXiv AI
1d ago

Rethinking Generalization in Reasoning SFT: A Conditional Analysis on Optimization, Data, and Model Capability

arXiv:2604. 06628v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A prevailing narrative in LLM post-training holds that supervised finetuning (SFT) memorizes while reinforcement learning (RL) generalizes.

By Qihan Ren, Peng Wang, Ruikun Cai, Shuai Shao, Dadi Guo, Yuejin Xie, Yafu Li, Quanshi Zhang, Xia Hu, Jing Shao, Dongrui Liu
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 21

REGEN: Replay-recycling for Expert-to-Generalist distillation with Offline Reinforcement Learning

Large-scale online reinforcement learning (RL) is the predominant means of eliciting advanced abilities including long-term reasoning and agentic tool use in large language models (LLMs). However, continuing to scale it across vast task domains of interest remains challenging in both computational infrastructure and cost, especially when considering RL as merely a one-off learning stage.

arXiv AI
Jul 3

Procedural Memory Distillation: Online Reflection for Self-Improving Language Models

arXiv:2607. 01480v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), along with recent selfdistillation variants such as SDPO, evaluates each rollout against a verifier and updates the policy from that episode-level signal.

By Ye Liu, Srijan Bansal, Bo Pang, Yang Li, Zeyu Leo Liu, Yifei Ming, Zixuan Ke, Shafiq Joty, Semih Yavuz