The paper introduces CodeHack, a library of code-based skills with natural-language descriptions designed to improve language agents in complex environments like NetHack. By allowing agents to invoke reusable skills instead of selecting individual actions, the study shows that skill-based agents nearly triple game progression and cut inference cost by 86% in zero‑shot settings, while still retaining the option to fall back on primitive actions. In reinforcement learning, skill-based agents learn faster, achieving a 7.2× larger average gain in dungeon level within the same training budget.
By Bart{\l}omiej Cupia{\l}, Jens Tuyls, Maciej Wo{\l}czyk, Davide Paglieri, Martin Klissarov, Benjamin Eysenbach, Piotr Mi{\l}o\'s, Karthik R. Narasimhan
arXiv:2608. 03420v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models have improved substantially on single-shot reasoning tasks, but their performance in sequential decision-making is less well understood.
By Jakub Rada (AI Center, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague), Viliam Lis\'y (AI Center, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague)
arXiv:2606. 29932v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-horizon strategic planning in complex strategy games demands concurrent reasoning across multiple decision domains under imperfect information and sparse reward.
By Tianyu Jin, Shuo Chen, Yida Wang, Liuyu Xiang, Yingzhuo Liu, Zhiyao Jiang, Yexin Li, Zhaofeng He
arXiv:2606. 00017v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training language model agents for multi-agent strategic interaction presents a core difficulty: the quality of any action may depend on future events that never materialize, on moves that violate game rules, or on decisions made by other players.
By Aliaksei Korshuk, Alexander Buyantuev, Ilya Makarov
The paper introduces a method for creating reactive character behaviors in continuous games as compact, human‑readable programs. It searches over a domain‑specific language that uses reactive geometric decisions and higher‑order constructs to discretize continuous behavior space, while eliminating redundant program forms through synthesis antipatterns. The approach, called agentic sketching, combines bottom‑up symbolic enumeration with top‑down guidance from a coding agent, and outperforms either technique alone on a benchmark of 14 continuous games.
By Maxim Gumin, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Victor Zordan, Daniel Ritchie
arXiv:2609.38881v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Real-time strategy (RTS) games require agents to coordinate economic development, production and construction, base defense, unit organization, and att...
By Xinhe Tian, Xiaoyue Zhang, Ziyou Zhang, Jiacheng Li, Xiaoqiang Jin, Qianchuan Zhao, Gaochen Cui