LLM Agent Self-Improvement

LLM: Large Language Model

Overview

This field studies how language-model agents can improve across tasks by learning from their own executions, failures, human feedback, or interaction with an environment. Common approaches update prompts, harnesses, skills, memory, or tools while keeping model weights fixed; others use reinforcement learning, self-distillation, or co-evolving tasks and agents. Methods often analyze trajectories to diagnose weaknesses, then test candidate changes with benchmarks, paired comparisons, or held-out regression gates. A central challenge is making gains transfer to new settings without eroding previously reliable behavior, while keeping evaluation trustworthy and improvement costs manageable.

Latest papers

CardsList

277 papers73 papers in the last four weeks, up 121% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

  1. SHARP: A Self-Evolving Human-Auditable Rubric Policy for Financial Trading Agents

    May 7, 2026Xiwen Chen, Wenhui Zhu, Songzhu Zheng +3Reinforcement LearningCredit Assignment in RL

  2. TheraAgent: Self-Improving Therapeutic Agent for Precise and Comprehensive Treatment Planning

    May 7, 2026Junkai Li, Yunghwei Lai, Tianyi Zhu +3LLM Self-RefinementHealthcare

  3. ANNEAL: Adapting LLM Agents via Governed Symbolic Patch Learning

    May 4, 2026Safayat Bin Hakim, Keyan Guo, Wenkai Tan +3LLM Agent Self-ImprovementAI Agent Governance

  4. Skills-Coach: A Self-Evolving Skill Optimizer via Training-Free GRPO

    Apr 30, 2026Yu Tian, Jiawei Chen, Lifan Zheng +5LLM Agent Self-ImprovementLLM Agent Skill Learning

  5. Self-Evolving Software Agents

    Apr 29, 2026Marco Robol, Paolo GiorginiSoftware Engineering AgentsLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  6. SiriusHelper: An LLM Agent-Based Operations Assistant for Big Data Platforms

    Apr 29, 2026Yu Shen, Shiyang Liu, Qihang He +14Customer Support AutomationLLM Agent Orchestration

  7. AEL: Agent Evolving Learning for Open-Ended Environments

    Apr 23, 2026Wujiang Xu, Jiaojiao Han, Minghao Guo +4LLM Agent Self-ImprovementLLM Agents

  8. The Last Harness You'll Ever Build

    Apr 22, 2026Haebin Seong, Li Yin, Haoran Zhang +1Meta-LearningAgent Harness Optimization

  9. Training LLM Agents for Spontaneous, Reward-Free Self-Evolution via World Knowledge Exploration

    Apr 20, 2026Qifan Zhang, Dongyang Ma, Tianqing Fang +5Intrinsic MotivationLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  10. Autogenesis: A Self-Evolving Agent Protocol

    Apr 16, 2026Wentao Zhang, Zhe Zhao, Haibin Wen +4Multi-Agent LLM SystemsLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  11. Evo-MedAgent: Beyond One-Shot Diagnosis with Agents That Remember, Reflect, and Improve

    Apr 15, 2026Weixiang Shen, Bailiang Jian, Jun Li +6Medical AI AgentsLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  12. Mem2^2Evolve: Towards Self-Evolving Agents via Co-Evolutionary Capability Expansion and Experience Distillation

    Apr 13, 2026Zihao Cheng, Zeming Liu, Yingyu Shan +7LLM Agent Self-ImprovementSelf-Evolving Agents

  13. Semantic Feature Analysis: Improving Agents Without Searching Over Rollouts

    Apr 12, 2026Yuval David, Fabiana Fournier, Lior Limonad +1LLM Agent Self-ImprovementTool-Using Agents

  14. SkillClaw: Let Skills Evolve Collectively with Agentic Evolver

    Apr 9, 2026Ziyu Ma, Shidong Yang, Yuxiang Ji +5LLM Agent Skill LearningLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  15. TRACE: Capability-Targeted Agentic Training

    Apr 7, 2026Hangoo Kang, Tarun Suresh, Jon Saad-Falcon +1LLM Agent Self-ImprovementAgent Skill Learning

  16. Combee: Scaling Prompt Learning for Self-Improving Language Model Agents

    Apr 5, 2026Hanchen Li, Runyuan He, Qizheng Zhang +11LLM Input OptimizationLLM Prompting

  17. SKILLFOUNDRY: Building Self-Evolving Agent Skill Libraries from Heterogeneous Scientific Resources

    Apr 5, 2026Shuaike Shen, Wenduo Cheng, Mingqian Ma +3Agent Skill LearningAI Agents for Scientific Discovery

  18. GUIDE: Guided Updates for In-context Decision Evolution in LLM-Driven Spacecraft Operations

    Mar 28, 2026Alejandro Carrasco, Mariko Storey-Matsutani, Victor Rodriguez-Fernandez +1Language Model-Based ControlLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  19. Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skills

    Mar 26, 2026Jingwei Ni, Yihao Liu, Xinpeng Liu +7LLM Agent Skill LearningLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  20. AnalogAgent: Self-Improving Analog Circuit Design Automation with LLM Agents

    Mar 25, 2026Zhixuan Bao, Zhuoyi Lin, Jiageng Wang +5Electronic Design AutomationLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  21. REVERE: Reflective Evolving Research Engineer

    Mar 21, 2026Balaji Dinesh Gangireddi, Aniketh Garikaparthi, Manasi Patwardhan +1LLM Agent Self-ImprovementPrompt Optimization

  22. OpenHospital: A Thing-in-itself Arena for Evolving and Benchmarking LLM-based Collective Intelligence

    Mar 16, 2026Peigen Liu, Rui Ding, Yuren Mao +7LLM AgentsAI Agent Benchmarks

  23. GameUIAgent: An LLM-Powered Framework for Automated Game UI Design with Structured Intermediate Representation

    Mar 16, 2026Wei Zeng, Fengwei An, Zhen Liu +1Vision-Language AgentsLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  24. Trajectory-Informed Memory Generation for Self-Improving Agent Systems

    Mar 11, 2026Gaodan Fang, Vatche Isahagian, K. R. Jayaram +4LLM Agent Self-ImprovementLLM Agent Memory

  25. MEMO: Memory-Augmented Model Context Optimization for Robust Multi-Turn Multi-Agent LLM Games

    Mar 9, 2026Yunfei Xie, Kevin Wang, Bobby Cheng +9Multi-Agent LLM SystemsLLM Agent Self-Improvement

  26. EvoTool: Self-Evolving Tool-Use Policy Optimization in LLM Agents via Blame-Aware Mutation and Diversity-Aware Selection

    Mar 5, 2026Shuo Yang, Soyeon Caren Han, Xueqi Ma +3Policy OptimizationLLM Agent Self-Improvement