SEARL: Joint Optimization of Policy and Tool Graph Memory for Self-Evolving Agents
Organizations: Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory · Shanghai Jiaotong University
Abstract
Recent advances in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) have demonstrated significant potential in single-turn reasoning tasks. With the paradigm shift toward self-evolving agentic learning, models are increasingly expected to learn from trajectories by synthesizing tools or accumulating explicit experiences. However, prevailing methods typically rely on large-scale LLMs or multi-agent frameworks, which hinder their deployment in resource-constrained environments. The inherent sparsity of outcome-based rewards also poses a substantial challenge, as agents typically receive feedback only upon completion of tasks. To address these limitations, we introduce a Tool-Memory based self-evolving agentic framework SEARL. Unlike approaches that directly utilize interaction experiences, our method constructs a structured experience memory that integrates planning with execution. This provides a novel state abstraction that facilitates generalization across analogous contexts, such as tool reuse. Consequently, agents extract explicit knowledge from historical data while leveraging inter-trajectory correlations to densify reward signals. We evaluate our framework on knowledge reasoning and mathematics tasks, demonstrating its effectiveness in achieving more practical and efficient learning.
Figures & tables
| Methods | Mathematical Reasoning | Multi-Hop QA | Avg Rank | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GSM8K | MATH500 | AIME24 | HotpotQA | 2wiki | Musique | Bamboogle | ||
| TIR Prompt | 0.2259 | 0.0540 | 0.0000 | 0.2300 | 0.1250 | 0.0350 | 0.1200 | 5.29 |
| GRPO | 0.8870 | 0.7360 | 0.1333 | 0.2150 | 0.3450 | 0.0900 | 0.1600 | 2.43 |
| DAPO | 0.8059 | 0.5520 | 0.1333 | 0.3350 | 0.3500 | 0.0650 | 0.2480 | 3.00 |
| Reinforce++ | 0.8658 | 0.6800 | 0.1000 | 0.1100 | 0.2600 | 0.0000 | 0.0080 | 4.57 |
| ARPO | 0.8241 | 0.6480 | 0.3333 | 0.1400 | 0.2200 | 0.0650 | 0.1760 | 3.57 |
Appendix figures & tables4 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Hyperparameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Backbone Model | Qwen-3-4B |
| top_p | 0.98 |
| rollout_num | 8 |
| temperature | 0.7 |
| repetition_penalty | 1.05 |
| max_turns | 6 |
Self-Evolving Agents
Self-evolving agents improve their skills, memory, tools, policies, or environments by learning from interaction and evaluation feedback.
See all 421 papers