Watch and Learn: Learning to Use Computers from Online Videos
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Abstract (arXiv)
Computer-using agents (CUAs) must plan task workflows across diverse and evolving applications, yet progress is limited by the lack of large-scale, high-quality training data. Existing datasets are narrow, static, and costly to annotate, while synthetic data often yields oversimplified or misaligned behaviors. We present Watch & Learn (W&L), a framework that converts readily available Internet videos of human computer use into executable UI trajectories at scale. Instead of directly generating actions or relying on handcrafted heuristics, we cast trajectory annotation as an inverse dynamics problem that predicts user actions from consecutive screen states, which simplifies learning and generalizes across domains. Through a task-aware retrieval and labeling pipeline, W&L yields over 53K high-quality trajectories that enhance CUAs both as in-context exemplars and as supervised training data. On OSWorld, it consistently improves general-purpose and specialized CUAs, while on WindowsAgentArena it achieves state-of-the-art performance among 7B-scale models under the 15-step limit. These results show that web-scale human demonstration videos can serve as a practical and scalable foundation for advancing real-world CUAs.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 36 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2025.
Builds on
36 of 48 references.
References · 36
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- 2024WebRL: Training LLM Web Agents via Self-Evolving Online Curriculum Reinforcement Learningcited by 243
24 more
- 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scalecited by 212
- 2024Many-Shot In-Context Learningcited by 203
- 2024On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agentscited by 187
- 2024Agent S: An Open Agentic Framework that Uses Computers Like a Humancited by 182
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026Video2GUI: Synthesizing Large-Scale Interaction Trajectories for Generalized GUI Agent Pretrainingcited by 5
- 2026GUIDE: A Benchmark for Understanding and Assisting Users in Open-Ended GUI Taskscited by 4
- 2026GUIDE: Resolving Domain Bias in GUI Agents through Real-Time Web Video Retrieval and Plug-and-Play Annotationcited by 4
- 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitantscited by 3
- 2026Learn from Weaknesses: Automated Domain Specialization for Small Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
- 2026Bridging VideoQA and Video-Guided Agentic Tasks via Generalized Keyframe Extractioncited by 0
- 2026Activity Frames: Deterministic Screen-Activity Compilation for Agent Memory and Replaycited by 0
- 2026Inducing Task Models from Computer-Use Tracescited by 0
- 2026AutoGUIWorld: Image Generators as Visual World Models for GUI Agentcited by 0
- 2026AutoGUIWorld: Image Generators as Visual World Models for GUI Agent1 Oct 2026
- 2026Inducing Task Models from Computer-Use Traces20 Aug 2026
- 2026Activity Frames: Deterministic Screen-Activity Compilation for Agent Memory and Replay6 Aug 2026
- 2026Bridging VideoQA and Video-Guided Agentic Tasks via Generalized Keyframe Extraction28 Jun 2026
- 2026Learn from Weaknesses: Automated Domain Specialization for Small Computer-Use Agents27 May 2026
- 2026Video2GUI: Synthesizing Large-Scale Interaction Trajectories for Generalized GUI Agent Pretraining14 May 2026
- 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitants30 Apr 2026
- 2026GUIDE: Resolving Domain Bias in GUI Agents through Real-Time Web Video Retrieval and Plug-and-Play Annotation27 Mar 2026
- 2026GUIDE: A Benchmark for Understanding and Assisting Users in Open-Ended GUI Tasks26 Mar 2026