mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

UI-Evol: Automatic Knowledge Evolving for Computer Use Agents

arXiv 2505.21964 ↗First posted 28 May 2025cs.HC cs.CLcited by 1

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → GUI and mobile agents

Abstract (arXiv)

External knowledge has played a crucial role in the recent development of computer use agents. We identify a critical knowledge-execution gap: retrieved knowledge often fails to translate into effective real-world task execution. Our analysis shows even 90% correct knowledge yields only 41% execution success rate. To bridge this gap, we propose UI-Evol, a plug-and-play module for autonomous GUI knowledge evolution. UI-Evol consists of two stages: a Retrace Stage that extracts faithful objective action sequences from actual agent-environment interactions, and a Critique Stage that refines existing knowledge by comparing these sequences against external references. We conduct comprehensive experiments on the OSWorld benchmark with the state-of-the-art Agent S2. Our results demonstrate that UI-Evol not only significantly boosts task performance but also addresses a previously overlooked issue of high behavioral standard deviation in computer use agents, leading to superior performance on computer use tasks and substantially improved agent reliability.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 37 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 May 2025.

Builds on

37 of 46 references.

Closest ancestors · 14

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025InfiGUI-R1: Advancing Multimodal GUI Agents from Reactive Actors to Deliberative Reasoners19 Apr
  2. 2025GUI-R1 : A Generalist R1-Style Vision-Language Action Model For GUI Agents14 Apr
  3. 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agents1 Apr
  4. 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents21 Jan
  5. 2025InfiGUIAgent: A Multimodal Generalist GUI Agent with Native Reasoning and Reflection8 Jan
  6. 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents30 Oct
  7. 2024Agent S: An Open Agentic Framework that Uses Computers Like a Human10 Oct
  8. 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents7 Oct
  9. 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scale12 Sep
  10. 2024AppAgent v2: Advanced Agent for Flexible Mobile Interactions5 Aug
  11. 2024OS-Copilot: Towards Generalist Computer Agents with Self-Improvement12 Feb
  12. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents17 Jan
2 more
  1. 2023AppAgent: Multimodal Agents as Smartphone Users21 Dec
  2. 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents14 Dec

Other references · 23

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  2. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  3. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  4. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  5. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  6. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
  7. 2023Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debugcited by 988
  8. 2023CRITIC: Large Language Models Can Self-Correct with Tool-Interactive Critiquingcited by 783
  9. 2024GPT-4V(ision) is a Generalist Web Agent, if Groundedcited by 563
  10. 2023Ghost in the Minecraft: Generally Capable Agents for Open-World Environments via Large Language Models with Text-based Knowledge and Memorycited by 289
  11. 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 278
  12. 2025SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skillscited by 192
11 more
  1. 2020Mapping Natural Language Instructions to Mobile UI Action Sequencescited by 181
  2. 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 140
  3. 2024Cradle: Empowering Foundation Agents Towards General Computer Controlcited by 117
  4. 2024Symbolic Learning Enables Self-Evolving Agentscited by 106
  5. 2024A Survey on Self-Evolution of Large Language Modelscited by 91
  6. 2023SelfEvolve: A Code Evolution Framework via Large Language Modelscited by 43
  7. 2024OSCAR: Operating System Control via State-Aware Reasoning and Re-Planningcited by 38
  8. 2025UI-E2I-Synth: Advancing GUI Grounding with Large-Scale Instruction Synthesiscited by 20
  9. 2023Reinforced UI Instruction Grounding: Towards a Generic UI Task Automation APIcited by 18
  10. 2023Responsible Task Automation: Empowering Large Language Models as Responsible Task Automatorscited by 14
  11. 2021Understanding Mobile GUI: from Pixel-Words to Screen-Sentencescited by 13

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025AppAgentX: Evolving GUI Agents as Proficient Smartphone Users
  2. 2026Learning Reliable GUI Agents under Imperfect Priors
  3. 2026MAGNET: Towards Adaptive GUI Agents with Memory-Driven Knowledge Evolution
  4. 2026Darwinian Memory: A Training-Free Self-Regulating Memory System for GUI Agent Evolution
  5. 2026OmegaUse: Building a General-Purpose GUI Agent for Autonomous Task Execution
  6. 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agents
  7. 2026EE-MCP: Self-Evolving MCP-GUI Agents via Automated Environment Generation and Experience Learning
  8. 2025GUI-360^circ: A Comprehensive Dataset and Benchmark for Computer-Using Agents