# Surfer 2: The Next Generation of Cross-Platform Computer Use Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19949 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19949/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers 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 47 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Oct 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [GUI and mobile agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/gui-and-mobile-agents/)

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

- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13854/) (2023)
- [Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04779/) (2020)
- [WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09332/) (2021)
- [Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06169/) (2021)
- [OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07972/) (2024)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14573/) (2024)
- [WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13919/) (2024)
- [OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23218/) (2024)
- [Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10088/) (2023)
- [Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16158/) (2024)
- [Reinforcement Learning on Web Interfaces Using Workflow-Guided Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08802/) (2018)
- [Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04454/) (2024)
- [WebRL: Training LLM Web Agents via Self-Evolving Online Curriculum Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02337/) (2024)
- [ArCHer: Training Language Model Agents via Hierarchical Multi-Turn RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19446/) (2024)
- [Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08264/) (2024)
- [UI-TARS-2 Technical Report: Advancing GUI Agent with Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02544/) (2025)
- [DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11896/) (2024)
- [Agent Q: Advanced Reasoning and Learning for Autonomous AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07199/) (2024)
- [Plan-and-Act: Improving Planning of Agents for Long-Horizon Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09572/) (2025)
- [On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03679/) (2024)
- [Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15144/) (2025)
- [Agent S: An Open Agentic Framework that Uses Computers Like a Human](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08164/) (2024)
- [You Only Look at Screens: Multimodal Chain-of-Action Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11436/) (2023)
- [OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09123/) (2025)
- [Offline RL for Natural Language Generation with Implicit Language Q Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11871/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Learning from Failure: Inference-Time Self-Improvement for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31270/) (2026)
- [Synergy: A Next-Generation General-Purpose Agent for Open Agentic Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28428/) (2026)
- [Agent-Computer Observation Interfaces Enable Dynamic Computer Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29472/) (2026)
- [Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07110/) (2026)
- [DragOn: A Benchmark and Dataset for Drag-Based GUI Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06322/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Building agents that generalize across web, desktop, and mobile environments remains an open challenge, as prior systems rely on environment-specific interfaces that limit cross-platform deployment. We introduce Surfer 2, a unified architecture operating purely from visual observations that achieves state-of-the-art performance across all three environments. Surfer 2 integrates hierarchical context management, decoupled planning and execution, and self-verification with adaptive recovery, enabling reliable operation over long task horizons. Our system achieves 97.1% accuracy on WebVoyager, 69.6% on WebArena, 60.1% on OSWorld, and 87.1% on AndroidWorld, outperforming all prior systems without task-specific fine-tuning. With multiple attempts, Surfer 2 exceeds human performance on all benchmarks. These results demonstrate that systematic orchestration amplifies foundation model capabilities and enables general-purpose computer control through visual interaction alone, while calling for a next-generation vision language model to achieve Pareto-optimal cost-efficiency.