# Do's and Don'ts: Learning Desirable Skills with Instruction Videos

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00324 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00324/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15556/) (2022)
- [D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07219/) (2020)
- [Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05905/) (2018)
- [Exploration by Random Network Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12894/) (2018)
- [DeepMind Control Suite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00690/) (2018)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning at the Edge of the Statistical Precipice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13264/) (2021)
- [Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06070/) (2018)
- [Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00111/) (2023)
- [Learning Interactive Real-World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06114/) (2023)
- [Relay Policy Learning: Solving Long-Horizon Tasks via Imitation and Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11956/) (2019)
- [Dynamics-Aware Unsupervised Discovery of Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01657/) (2019)
- [PEBBLE: Feedback-Efficient Interactive Reinforcement Learning via Relabeling Experience and Unsupervised Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05091/) (2021)
- [Efficient Exploration via State Marginal Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05274/) (2019)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation from Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06158/) (2018)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Prototypical Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11271/) (2021)
- [Behavior From the Void: Unsupervised Active Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04551/) (2021)
- [HIQL: Offline Goal-Conditioned RL with Latent States as Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11949/) (2023)
- [Fast Task Inference with Variational Intrinsic Successor Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05030/) (2019)
- [Discovering and Achieving Goals via World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.09514/) (2021)
- [Variational Option Discovery Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10299/) (2018)
- [Explore, Discover and Learn: Unsupervised Discovery of State-Covering Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03647/) (2020)
- [Optimal Goal-Reaching Reinforcement Learning via Quasimetric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01203/) (2023)
- [APS: Active Pretraining with Successor Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13956/) (2021)
- [Deep Hierarchical Planning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04114/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [SimBa: Simplicity Bias for Scaling Up Parameters in Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09754/) (2024)
- [Reference Grounded Skill Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06203/) (2025)
- [Periodic Skill Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03187/) (2025)
- [SUSD: Structured Unsupervised Skill Discovery through State Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01619/) (2026)
- [COLLIE: Guiding Skill Discovery in Semantically Coherent Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00950/) (2026)
- [Group-Invariant Unsupervised Skill Discovery: Symmetry-aware Skill Representations for Generalizable Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14000/) (2026)
- [Leveraging Human Feedback for Semantically-Relevant Skill Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24127/) (2026)
- [Game-Guided Skill Discovery through Self-Play for Playable Agent Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.40137/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unsupervised skill discovery is a learning paradigm that aims to acquire diverse behaviors without explicit rewards. However, it faces challenges in learning complex behaviors and often leads to learning unsafe or undesirable behaviors. For instance, in various continuous control tasks, current unsupervised skill discovery methods succeed in learning basic locomotions like standing but struggle with learning more complex movements such as walking and running. Moreover, they may acquire unsafe behaviors like tripping and rolling or navigate to undesirable locations such as pitfalls or hazardous areas. In response, we present DoDont (Do's and Don'ts), an instruction-based skill discovery algorithm composed of two stages. First, in an instruction learning stage, DoDont leverages action-free instruction videos to train an instruction network to distinguish desirable transitions from undesirable ones. Then, in the skill learning stage, the instruction network adjusts the reward function of the skill discovery algorithm to weight the desired behaviors. Specifically, we integrate the instruction network into a distance-maximizing skill discovery algorithm, where the instruction network serves as the distance function. Empirically, with less than 8 instruction videos, DoDont effectively learns desirable behaviors and avoids undesirable ones across complex continuous control tasks. Code and videos are available at https://mynsng.github.io/dodont/