arXiv AI By Yichun Feng, Jiawei Wang, Haozhe Sun

A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents

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The paper introduces SkillPivot, a framework that guides large language model agents to evolve their skills by pinpointing the exact moment a useful problem‑solving sequence turns into an erroneous suffix. SkillPivot uses execution validity, goal progress, and action diversity to detect this deviation point, then employs a stronger teacher to generate a successful alternative from the same prefix. By contrasting the failed and successful suffixes, the method produces localized, compact skill updates that preserve existing effective guidance, outperforming other skill‑evolution techniques on benchmarks such as ToolQA, LogicBench, and WildClawBench.

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arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 25

When Not to Imitate: Boundary-Aware Skill Memory for Reliable Tool-Use LLM Agents

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