rStar2-Agent: Agentic Reasoning Technical Report
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce rStar2-Agent, a 14B math reasoning model trained with agentic reinforcement learning to achieve frontier-level performance. Beyond current long CoT, the model demonstrates advanced cognitive behaviors, such as thinking carefully before using Python coding tools and reflecting on code execution feedback to autonomously explore, verify, and refine intermediate steps in complex problem-solving. This capability is enabled through three key innovations that makes agentic RL effective at scale: (i) an efficient RL infrastructure with a reliable Python code environment that supports high-throughput execution and mitigates the high rollout costs, enabling training on limited GPU resources (64 MI300X GPUs); (ii) GRPO-RoC, an agentic RL algorithm with a Resample-on-Correct rollout strategy that addresses the inherent environment noises from coding tools, allowing the model to reason more effectively in a code environment; (iii) An efficient agent training recipe that starts with non-reasoning SFT and progresses through multi-RL stages, yielding advanced cognitive abilities with minimal compute cost. To this end, rStar2-Agent boosts a pre-trained 14B model to state of the art in only 510 RL steps within one week, achieving average pass@1 scores of 80.6% on AIME24 and 69.8% on AIME25, surpassing DeepSeek-R1 (671B) with significantly shorter responses. Beyond mathematics, rStar2-Agent-14B also demonstrates strong generalization to alignment, scientific reasoning, and agentic tool-use tasks. Code and training recipes are available at https://github.com/microsoft/rStar.
Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 33 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Aug 2025.
Builds on
33 of 41 references.
Closest ancestors · 12
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Reasoning with Exploration: An Entropy Perspective17 Jun
- 2025AceReason-Nemotron 1.1: Advancing Math and Code Reasoning through SFT and RL Synergy16 Jun
- 2025Beyond the 80/20 Rule: High-Entropy Minority Tokens Drive Effective Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning2 Jun
- 2025ProRL: Prolonged Reinforcement Learning Expands Reasoning Boundaries in Large Language Models30 May
- 2025The Entropy Mechanism of Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning Language Models28 May
- 2025Why Distillation can Outperform Zero-RL: The Role of Flexible Reasoning27 May
- 2025MiMo: Unlocking the Reasoning Potential of Language Model -- From Pretraining to Posttraining12 May
- 2025Does Reinforcement Learning Really Incentivize Reasoning Capacity in LLMs Beyond the Base Model?18 Apr
- 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale18 Mar
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning22 Jan
- 2025Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMs22 Jan
- 2023Let's Verify Step by Step31 May
Other references · 21
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
- 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,879
- 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
- 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,228
- 2023SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programscited by 1,141
- 2024From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipelinecited by 500
- 2025Stop Overthinking: A Survey on Efficient Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 464
- 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMscited by 392
- 2025ToolRL: Reward is All Tool Learning Needscited by 362
- 2025rStar-Math: Small LLMs Can Master Math Reasoning with Self-Evolved Deep Thinkingcited by 313
- 2025MathArena: Evaluating LLMs on Uncontaminated Math Competitionscited by 297
- 2025MiniMax-M1: Scaling Test-Time Compute Efficiently with Lightning Attentioncited by 263
9 more
- 2023Magicoder: Empowering Code Generation with OSS-Instructcited by 256
- 2025AIMO-2 Winning Solution: Building State-of-the-Art Mathematical Reasoning Models with OpenMathReasoning datasetcited by 174
- 2025ToRL: Scaling Tool-Integrated RLcited by 169
- 2025APIGen-MT: Agentic Pipeline for Multi-Turn Data Generation via Simulated Agent-Human Interplaycited by 167
- 2025Seed1.5-Thinking: Advancing Superb Reasoning Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 161
- 2025Llama-Nemotron: Efficient Reasoning Modelscited by 158
- 2025Phi-4-reasoning Technical Reportcited by 151
- 2025Agent RL Scaling Law: Agent RL with Spontaneous Code Execution for Mathematical Problem Solvingcited by 62
- 2025Promoting Efficient Reasoning with Verifiable Stepwise Rewardcited by 28
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 27; 2026: 27.
54 papers.
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- 2026Implicit Hierarchical GRPO: Decoupling Tool Invocation from Execution for Tool-Integrated Mathematical Reasoning18 May 2026
- 2026Teaching Language Models to Think in Code8 May 2026
- 2026Teaching Thinking Models to Reason with Tools: A Full-Pipeline Recipe for Tool-Integrated Reasoning7 May 2026
- 2026T2PO: Uncertainty-Guided Exploration Control for Stable Multi-Turn Agentic Reinforcement Learning4 May 2026
- 2026Fine-Tuning Small Reasoning Models for Quantum Field Theory21 Apr 2026
- 2026SHAPE: Stage-aware Hierarchical Advantage via Potential Estimation for LLM Reasoning8 Apr 2026
- 2026Train Less, Learn More: Adaptive Efficient Rollout Optimization for Group-Based Reinforcement Learning15 Feb 2026
- 2026Training LLMs for Divide-and-Conquer Reasoning Elevates Test-Time Scalability2 Feb 2026
- 2026Evolving from Tool User to Creator via Training-Free Experience Reuse in Multimodal Reasoning2 Feb 2026
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- 2025The Landscape of Agentic Reinforcement Learning for LLMs: A Surveycited by 205
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- 2026Orchard: An Open-Source Agentic Modeling Frameworkcited by 8
- 2025Planner-R1: Reward Shaping Enables Efficient Agentic RL with Smaller LLMscited by 7
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- 2026Orchard: An Open-Source Agentic Modeling Framework14 May 2026
- 2026A collaborative agent with two lightweight synergistic models for autonomous crystal materials research13 Apr 2026
- 2026DualSpec: Accelerating Deep Research Agents via Dual-Process Action Speculation8 Mar 2026
- 2026MM-DeepResearch: A Simple and Effective Multimodal Agentic Search Baseline1 Mar 2026
- 2026Agent-Omit: Adaptive Context Omission for Efficient LLM Agents4 Feb 2026
- 2026CLEANER: Self-Purified Trajectories Boost Agentic Reinforcement Learning21 Jan 2026
- 2025AMAP Agentic Planning Technical Report31 Dec 2025
- 2025MindWatcher: Toward Smarter Multimodal Tool-Integrated Reasoning29 Dec 2025
- 2025Achieving Olympiad-Level Geometry Large Language Model Agent via Complexity Boosting Reinforcement Learning11 Dec 2025
- 2025CuES: A Curiosity-driven and Environment-grounded Synthesis Framework for Agentic RL1 Dec 2025
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- 2026JigsawRL: Assembling RL Pipelines for Efficient LLM Post-Training26 Apr 2026
- 2026Adaptive Layerwise Perturbation: Unifying Off-Policy Corrections for LLM RL19 Mar 2026
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- 2025LoopTool: Closing the Data-Training Loop for Robust LLM Tool Calls12 Nov 2025
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