mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Agent0-VL: Exploring Self-Evolving Agent for Tool-Integrated Vision-Language Reasoning

arXiv 2511.19900 ↗First posted 25 Nov 2025cs.CV cs.AIcited by 31

On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-language agents have achieved remarkable progress in a variety of multimodal reasoning tasks; however, their learning remains constrained by the limitations of human-annotated supervision. Recent self-rewarding approaches attempt to overcome this constraint by allowing models to act as their own critics or reward providers. Yet, purely text-based self-evaluation struggles to verify complex visual reasoning steps and often suffers from evaluation hallucinations. To address these challenges, inspired by recent advances in tool-integrated reasoning, we propose Agent0-VL, a self-evolving vision-language agent that achieves continual improvement with tool-integrated reasoning. Agent0-VL incorporates tool usage not only into reasoning but also into self-evaluation and self-repair, enabling the model to introspect, verify, and refine its reasoning through evidence-grounded analysis. It unifies two synergistic roles within a single LVLM: a Solver that performs multi-turn tool-integrated reasoning, and a Verifier that generates structured feedback and fine-grained self-rewards through tool-grounded critique. These roles interact through a Self-Evolving Reasoning Cycle, where tool-based verification and reinforcement learning jointly align the reasoning and evaluation distributions for stable self-improvement. Through this zero-external-reward evolution, Agent0-VL aligns its reasoning and verification behaviors without any human annotation or external reward models, achieving continual self-improvement. Experiments on geometric problem solving and visual scientific analysis show that Agent0-VL achieves an 12.5% improvement over the base model. Our code is available at https://github.com/aiming-lab/Agent0.

Key facts. Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 65 of its 83 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2025.

Builds on

65 of 83 references.

Closest ancestors · 20

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025VisPlay: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models from Images19 Nov
  2. 2025VAGEN: Reinforcing World Model Reasoning for Multi-Turn VLM Agents19 Oct
  3. 2025Self-Rewarding Vision-Language Model via Reasoning Decomposition27 Aug
  4. 2025Thyme: Think Beyond Images15 Aug
  5. 2025Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontiers30 Jun
  6. 2025Sherlock: Self-Correcting Reasoning in Vision-Language Models28 May
  7. 2025Pixel Reasoner: Incentivizing Pixel-Space Reasoning with Curiosity-Driven Reinforcement Learning21 May
  8. 2025GRIT: Teaching MLLMs to Think with Images21 May
  9. 2025DeepEyes: Incentivizing "Thinking with Images" via Reinforcement Learning20 May
  10. 2025OpenThinkIMG: Learning to Think with Images via Visual Tool Reinforcement Learning13 May
  11. 2025SFT or RL? An Early Investigation into Training R1-Like Reasoning Large Vision-Language Models10 Apr
  12. 2025SoTA with Less: MCTS-Guided Sample Selection for Data-Efficient Visual Reasoning Self-Improvement10 Apr
8 more
  1. 2025Grounded Chain-of-Thought for Multimodal Large Language Models17 Mar
  2. 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalization13 Mar
  3. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models9 Mar
  4. 2024Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling6 Dec
  5. 2024We-Math: Does Your Large Multimodal Model Achieve Human-like Mathematical Reasoning?1 Jul
  6. 2024Visual Sketchpad: Sketching as a Visual Chain of Thought for Multimodal Language Models13 Jun
  7. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct
  8. 2023MM-REACT: Prompting ChatGPT for Multimodal Reasoning and Action20 Mar

Other references · 45

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,708
  3. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  4. 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,719
  5. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,080
  6. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,947
  7. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  8. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,444
  9. 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIscited by 1,332
  10. 2023HallusionBench: An Advanced Diagnostic Suite for Entangled Language Hallucination and Visual Illusion in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 583
  11. 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMscited by 392
  12. 2021Inter-GPS: Interpretable Geometry Problem Solving with Formal Language and Symbolic Reasoningcited by 383
33 more
  1. 2025R1-VL: Learning to Reason with Multimodal Large Language Models via Step-wise Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 301
  2. 2023ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem Solvingcited by 282
  3. 2025TTRL: Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 275
  4. 2021GeoQA: A Geometric Question Answering Benchmark Towards Multimodal Numerical Reasoningcited by 228
  5. 2025Learning to Reason without External Rewardscited by 210
  6. 2025Deep Think with Confidencecited by 205
  7. 2024Aligning Modalities in Vision Large Language Models via Preference Fine-tuningcited by 198
  8. 2023LLaVA-Plus: Learning to Use Tools for Creating Multimodal Agentscited by 193
  9. 2025ToRL: Scaling Tool-Integrated RLcited by 169
  10. 2023MathCoder: Seamless Code Integration in LLMs for Enhanced Mathematical Reasoningcited by 156
  11. 2025SimpleTIR: End-to-End Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Tool-Integrated Reasoningcited by 146
  12. 2024Multimodal ArXiv: A Dataset for Improving Scientific Comprehension of Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 139
  13. 2024StableToolBench: Towards Stable Large-Scale Benchmarking on Tool Learning of Large Language Modelscited by 132
  14. 2025Right Question is Already Half the Answer: Fully Unsupervised LLM Reasoning Incentivizationcited by 128
  15. 2025MMSearch-R1: Incentivizing LMMs to Searchcited by 124
  16. 2025WebWatcher: Breaking New Frontier of Vision-Language Deep Research Agentcited by 119
  17. 2024ZoomEye: Enhancing Multimodal LLMs with Human-Like Zooming Capabilities through Tree-Based Image Explorationcited by 103
  18. 2025MM-RLHF: The Next Step Forward in Multimodal LLM Alignmentcited by 83
  19. 2024Calibrated Self-Rewarding Vision Language Modelscited by 78
  20. 2024Beyond LLaVA-HD: Diving into High-Resolution Large Multimodal Modelscited by 76
  21. 2023Language Model Self-improvement by Reinforcement Learning Contemplationcited by 75
  22. 2025Agent0: Unleashing Self-Evolving Agents from Zero Data via Tool-Integrated Reasoningcited by 75
  23. 2025Self-rewarding correction for mathematical reasoningcited by 70
  24. 2025Can Large Reasoning Models Self-Train?cited by 68
  25. 2025Confidence Is All You Need: Few-Shot RL Fine-Tuning of Language Modelscited by 62
  26. 2025ReAgent-V: A Reward-Driven Multi-Agent Framework for Video Understandingcited by 50
  27. 2025DeepMMSearch-R1: Empowering Multimodal LLMs in Multimodal Web Searchcited by 42
  28. 2025Vision-Zero: Scalable VLM Self-Improvement via Strategic Gamified Self-Playcited by 37
  29. 2025LLaVA-Critic-R1: Your Critic Model is Secretly a Strong Policy Modelcited by 35
  30. 2025EvoLMM: Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models with Continuous Rewardscited by 27
  31. 2025Incentivizing Agentic Reasoning in LLM Judges via Tool-Integrated Reinforcement Learningcited by 17
  32. 2025ViPER: Empowering the Self-Evolution of Visual Perception Abilities in Vision-Language Modelcited by 11
  33. 2025Mimicking the Physicist's Eye:A VLM-centric Approach for Physics Formula Discoverycited by 7

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 29.

31 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learningcited by 278
  2. 2026SimpleMem: Efficient Lifelong Memory for LLM Agentscited by 149
  3. 2026From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory Mechanismscited by 21
  4. 2025Training Versatile Coding Agents in Synthetic Environmentscited by 13
  5. 2026ClawArena: Benchmarking AI Agents in Evolving Information Environmentscited by 11
  6. 2026iReasoner: Trajectory-Aware Intrinsic Reasoning Supervision for Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Modelscited by 7
  7. 2026One Model, All Roles: Multi-Turn, Multi-Agent Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for Conversational Social Intelligencecited by 7
  8. 2026Autonomous Continual Learning for Environment Adaptation of Computer-Use Agentscited by 6
  9. 2026Paying More Attention to Visual Tokens in Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Modelscited by 6
  10. 2026RewardHarness: Self-Evolving Agentic Post-Trainingcited by 5
  11. 2026TACO: Tool-Augmented Credit Optimization for Agentic Tool Usecited by 5
  12. 2026SkillForge: Evolving Verifiable Skills for Reinforcement Learning Agentscited by 4
19 more
  1. 2025Fed-SE: Federated Self-Evolution for Privacy-Constrained Multi-Environment LLM Agentscited by 3
  2. 2026LAST: Leveraging Tools as Hints to Enhance Spatial Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 3
  3. 2026TRACER: Verifiable Generative Provenance for Multimodal Tool-Using Agentscited by 3
  4. 2026Self-evolving Embodied AIcited by 2
  5. 2026Agentic AI for Remote Sensing: Technical Challenges and Research Directionscited by 2
  6. 2026SimpleOCR: Rendering Visualized Questions to Teach MLLMs to Readcited by 1
  7. 2026From Blind Spots to Gains: Diagnostic-Driven Iterative Training for Large Multimodal Modelscited by 1
  8. 2026Seirenes: Adversarial Self-Play with Evolving Distractions for LLM Reasoningcited by 1
  9. 2026Cognitive-structured Multimodal Agent for Multimodal Understanding, Generation, and Editingcited by 1
  10. 2026MLToolBench: Learning Tool-Augmented Agents for Machine Learning Developmentcited by 1
  11. 2026Evaluation as Evolution: Transforming Adversarial Diffusion into Closed-Loop Curricula for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 0
  12. 2026Imperfect Visual Verification for Code Edition : A Case Study on TikZcited by 0
  13. 2026AdaTurn: Budget-Aware Test-Time Scaling for Active Visual Perception Agentscited by 0
  14. 2026DiffuseAgent-MI: Distributionally-Grounded,Tool-Integrated Self-Evolving Agents for Faithful Visual Reasoningcited by 0
  15. 2026ARISE-RL: Agentic Rubric-Grounded Iterative Self-Evolution with Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  16. 2026V-Gym: Enhancing Agentic Visual Reasoning via Skill-Data Co-Evolutioncited by 0
  17. 2026Trinity: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models with a Self-Verifiercited by 0
  18. 2026Evo2: Evolving the Evolver through Weight-Harness Co-Evolutioncited by 0
  19. 2026Self-Evolving Visual Agent via Margin Rewardcited by 0

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  1. 2026Evaluating Self-Correcting Vision Agents Through Quantitative and Qualitative Metrics
  2. 2026RISE: Reliable Improvement in Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models
  3. 2026Dynamo: Dynamic Skill-Tool Evolution for Vision-Language Agents
  4. 2026MM-Zero: Self-Evolving Multi-Model Vision Language Models From Zero Data
  5. 2025SE-VLN: A Self-Evolving Vision-Language Navigation Framework Based on Multimodal Large Language Models
  6. 2026Active Zero: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models through Active Environment Exploration
  7. 2026FaithEyes: Towards Faithful Tool Use via Multi-Agent Process-Image Verification
  8. 2026Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoning