mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

LASER: LLM Agent with State-Space Exploration for Web Navigation

arXiv 2309.08172 ↗First posted 15 Sep 2023cs.CLcited by 66

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Web, search, and research agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have been successfully adapted for interactive decision-making tasks like web navigation. While achieving decent performance, previous methods implicitly assume a forward-only execution mode for the model, where they only provide oracle trajectories as in-context examples to guide the model on how to reason in the environment. Consequently, the model could not handle more challenging scenarios not covered in the in-context examples, e.g., mistakes, leading to sub-optimal performance. To address this issue, we propose to model the interactive task as state space exploration, where the LLM agent transitions among a pre-defined set of states by performing actions to complete the task. This formulation enables flexible backtracking, allowing the model to recover from errors easily. We evaluate our proposed LLM Agent with State-Space ExploRation (LASER) on both the WebShop task and amazon.com. Experimental results show that LASER significantly outperforms previous methods and closes the gap with human performance on the web navigation task.

Key facts. Cited by 66 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 23 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Sep 2023.

Builds on

23 of 32 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents25 Jul
  2. 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web9 Jun
  3. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agents4 Jul

Other references · 20

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  4. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  5. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,304
  6. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  7. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  8. 2022Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Modelscited by 2,997
  9. 2022Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Modelscited by 1,057
  10. 2022PAL: Program-aided Language Modelscited by 635
  11. 2023Language Models can Solve Computer Taskscited by 371
  12. 2023A Real-World WebAgent with Planning, Long Context Understanding, and Program Synthesiscited by 350
8 more
  1. 2018Reinforcement Learning on Web Interfaces Using Workflow-Guided Explorationcited by 282
  2. 2023Auto-GPT for Online Decision Making: Benchmarks and Additional Opinionscited by 250
  3. 2023AdaPlanner: Adaptive Planning from Feedback with Language Modelscited by 193
  4. 2023Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Controlcited by 180
  5. 2023SwiftSage: A Generative Agent with Fast and Slow Thinking for Complex Interactive Taskscited by 166
  6. 2023Multimodal Web Navigation with Instruction-Finetuned Foundation Modelscited by 159
  7. 2023Hierarchical Prompting Assists Large Language Model on Web Navigationcited by 36
  8. 2023Chain-of-Skills: A Configurable Model for Open-domain Question Answeringcited by 19

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 4; 2024: 23; 2025: 31; 2026: 8.

66 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Modelscited by 424
  2. 2023An LLM Compiler for Parallel Function Callingcited by 170
  3. 2025WebAgent-R1: Training Web Agents via End-to-End Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 162
  4. 2024Large Language Model-Brained GUI Agents: A Surveycited by 160
  5. 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 136
  6. 2024GUICourse: From General Vision Language Models to Versatile GUI Agentscited by 112
  7. 2024G-Designer: Architecting Multi-agent Communication Topologies via Graph Neural Networkscited by 110
  8. 2025Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestrationcited by 102
  9. 2024GUI Agents: A Surveycited by 101
  10. 2024WebPilot: A Versatile and Autonomous Multi-Agent System for Web Task Execution with Strategic Explorationcited by 100
  11. 2025TRAIL: Trace Reasoning and Agentic Issue Localizationcited by 98
  12. 2025A Survey of WebAgents: Towards Next-Generation AI Agents for Web Automation with Large Foundation Modelscited by 87
38 more
  1. 2025Lifelong Learning of Large Language Model based Agents: A Roadmapcited by 78
  2. 2025SEAgent: Self-Evolving Computer Use Agent with Autonomous Learning from Experiencecited by 68
  3. 2023SteP: Stacked LLM Policies for Web Actionscited by 66
  4. 2025A Survey on (M)LLM-Based GUI Agentscited by 61
  5. 2024Understanding the Weakness of Large Language Model Agents within a Complex Android Environmentcited by 60
  6. 2023Experiential Co-Learning of Software-Developing Agentscited by 57
  7. 2024Ferret-UI 2: Mastering Universal User Interface Understanding Across Platformscited by 51
  8. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 47
  9. 2024OpenWebVoyager: Building Multimodal Web Agents via Iterative Real-World Exploration, Feedback and Optimizationcited by 45
  10. 2025UXAgent: An LLM Agent-Based Usability Testing Framework for Web Designcited by 39
  11. 2024DOCBENCH: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-based Document Reading Systemscited by 37
  12. 2025OS Agents: A Survey on MLLM-based Agents for General Computing Devices Usecited by 35
  13. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Agents for Computer Use: Foundations, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 33
  14. 2025A Survey of Large Language Model Empowered Agents for Recommendation and Search: Towards Next-Generation Information Retrievalcited by 31
  15. 2023Exposing Limitations of Language Model Agents in Sequential-Task Compositions on the Webcited by 23
  16. 2024WILBUR: Adaptive In-Context Learning for Robust and Accurate Web Agentscited by 22
  17. 2024When LLMs Go Online: The Emerging Threat of Web-Enabled LLMscited by 22
  18. 2025LLM Economist: Large Population Models and Mechanism Design in Multi-Agent Generative Simulacracited by 20
  19. 2024Open Models, Closed Minds? On Agents Capabilities in Mimicking Human Personalities through Open Large Language Modelscited by 19
  20. 2024AutoScraper: A Progressive Understanding Web Agent for Web Scraper Generationcited by 18
  21. 2024Mutual Theory of Mind in Human-AI Collaboration: An Empirical Study with LLM-driven AI Agents in a Real-time Shared Workspace Taskcited by 17
  22. 2024Iterative Experience Refinement of Software-Developing Agentscited by 16
  23. 2025ScaleTrack: Scaling and back-tracking Automated GUI Agentscited by 16
  24. 2025WebGames: Challenging General-Purpose Web-Browsing AI Agentscited by 12
  25. 2024CoAct: A Global-Local Hierarchy for Autonomous Agent Collaborationcited by 11
  26. 2025Prune4Web: DOM Tree Pruning Programming for Web Agentcited by 11
  27. 2025UXAgent: A System for Simulating Usability Testing of Web Design with LLM Agentscited by 10
  28. 2024Cognitive Kernel: An Open-source Agent System towards Generalist Autopilotscited by 9
  29. 2024NaviQAte: Functionality-Guided Web Application Navigationcited by 9
  30. 2026MobilityBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating Route-Planning Agents in Real-World Mobility Scenarioscited by 8
  31. 2024Grounded Language Agent for Product Search via Intelligent Web Interactionscited by 7
  32. 2025WorkForceAgent-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLM-based Web Agents via Reinforcement Learningcited by 7
  33. 2026WebArbiter: A Principle-Guided Reasoning Process Reward Model for Web Agentscited by 7
  34. 2024Fleet of Agents: Coordinated Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 5
  35. 2025DICE: Dynamic In-Context Example Selection in LLM Agents via Efficient Knowledge Transfercited by 5
  36. 2025Cross-Task Experiential Learning on LLM-based Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 4
  37. 2025Co-Saving: Resource Aware Multi-Agent Collaboration for Software Developmentcited by 3
  38. 2025Agent-ScanKit: Unraveling Memory and Reasoning of Multimodal Agents via Sensitivity Perturbationscited by 3

50 most cited of 66 All 66 (JSON)

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  1. 2024From Context to Action: Analysis of the Impact of State Representation and Context on the Generalization of Multi-Turn Web Navigation Agents
  2. 2024StateAct: Enhancing LLM Base Agents via Self-prompting and State-tracking
  3. 2024Web Agents with World Models: Learning and Leveraging Environment Dynamics in Web Navigation
  4. 2026LLMs for Text-Based Exploration and Navigation Under Partial Observability
  5. 2026AI Planning Framework for LLM-Based Web Agents
  6. 2023AllTogether: Investigating the Efficacy of Spliced Prompt for Web Navigation using Large Language Models
  7. 2026Why Do LLM-based Web Agents Fail? A Hierarchical Planning Perspective
  8. 2025Symbiotic Cooperation for Web Agents: Harnessing Complementary Strengths of Large and Small LLMs