arXiv Computation and Language

S3Gym: Can LLMs Turn Self-Testing and Self-Judging into Self-Improvement?

S3Gym is an interactive benchmark designed to evaluate large language models (LLMs) on their ability to self-improve through self-testing, self-judging, and self-improvement. It separates permissive exploration from strict held-out evaluation across seven text-based games with executable environment verifiers. Experiments show that self-improvement varies by task, with different experience incorporation pathways (direct history, summary memory, or parameter training) yielding mixed results and highlighting the need for agents to transform feedback into executable, transferable policies.

arXiv AI
Aug 7

EnvACE: Internalizing Environment Dynamics via World Rehearsal for Agentic Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2608. 06197v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training large language model agents for long-horizon tool use typically relies on interactions with real or synthesized executable environments, whose construction and verification are costly, or on external simulators that are difficult to ground.

By Zishan Xu, Zhiyuan Yao, Yuxin Chen, Yifu Guo, Zhengxi Lu, Yuquan Lu, Jinyang Huang, Yan Xu, Yasheng Wang, Weinan Zhang, Xingshan Zeng, Weiwen Liu
arXiv AI
Aug 19

On the Fragility of Self-Improving Agents: Variance, Task Order, and Underspecification

The paper re‑evaluates memory‑based self‑improving agents by adding multiple runs to measure variance and by randomizing task order. It finds that agent performance is noisy in complex, multi‑step environments and that improvement depends heavily on the sequence of tasks, revealing a hidden curriculum effect. The authors suggest that underspecification of tasks and environments contributes to this fragility and demonstrate that adding detailed rubrics and feedback can partially mitigate performance drops, though gaps remain.

By Qinyuan Ye, Yu Li, Yada Pruksachatkun, Jiaxin Zhang, Chien-Sheng Wu
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 18

On the Fragility of Self-Improving Agents: Variance, Task Order, and Underspecification

The paper re‑evaluates memory‑based self‑improving agents by running multiple trials and shuffling task orders, revealing that agent performance is noisy and highly sensitive to task sequencing. It shows that implicit curricula in default task orders act as hidden prerequisites for success, and that underspecification of tasks and environments contributes to fragility. Adding detailed rubrics and environment feedback partially mitigates performance drops but significant gaps remain, underscoring the need for stricter evaluation protocols and better human oversight.

arXiv AI
Jul 15

Critic Experience Bank: Self-Evolving Step-Level Confidence Estimation for LLM Agents

arXiv:2607. 12397v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM agents act in external environments where each action changes the state that later decisions condition on, and where a single wrong step can waste interaction budget or trigger irreversible side effects long before the final failure is observed.

By Yaopei Zeng, Congchao Wang, JianHang Chen, Nan Wang, Yurui Chang, Lu Lin
arXiv AI
Aug 20

SPADE: Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environments

SPADE (Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environments) is a reinforcement‑learning framework where a single large language model acts as both an Environment Designer—creating executable, long‑horizon training environments—and a Reasoning Agent—learning to act within those environments. The framework uses a regret signal based on the difference between rewarded performance with and without privileged hints to guide the Designer toward environments that are challenging yet solvable. Experiments show that, when scaled to 30‑billion‑parameter models, SPADE outperforms fixed‑environment baselines by significant margins across math, science, code, and reasoning benchmarks, and improves tool‑use performance on BFCL‑v4 and ACEBench‑Agent. whyItMatters":"By making environment design a learnable component, SPADE enables continuous self‑improvement and demonstrates that adaptive, self‑generated training environments can substantially boost language‑model performance across diverse tasks."

By Bo Liu, Simon Yu, Yiding Jiang, Ao Qu, Andrew Zhao, Zichen Liu, Junsu Kim, Zijian Zhou, Seungone Kim, Tongzheng Ren, Mickel Liu, Hanfei Yu, Zhaorun Chen, Weiyan Shi, Paul Pu Liang, Luke Zettlemoyer, Yejin Choi, Natasha Jaques
arXiv AI
Jun 4

Plan, Watch, Recover: A Benchmark and Architectures for Proactive Procedural Assistance

arXiv:2606. 04970v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We envision a proactive multi-modal assistant system which gives users real-time step-by-step guidance on a procedural task, autonomously deciding \textit{when} to interrupt, and \textit{how} to coach.

By Kaustav Kundu, Ritvik Shrivastava, Maxim Arap, Nanshu Wang, Xianhui Zhu, Quintin Fettes, Gautam Tiwari, Parth Suresh, Th\'eo Moutakanni, Alejandro Castillejo Munoz, Allen Bolourchi, Pascale Fung, Pinar Donmez, Babak Damavandi, Anuj Kumar, Seungwhan Moon