mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Step-GUI Technical Report

arXiv 2512.15431 ↗First posted 17 Dec 2025cs.CVcited by 38

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in multimodal large language models unlock unprecedented opportunities for GUI automation. However, a fundamental challenge remains: how to efficiently acquire high-quality training data while maintaining annotation reliability? We introduce a self-evolving training pipeline powered by the Calibrated Step Reward System, which converts model-generated trajectories into reliable training signals through trajectory-level calibration, achieving >90% annotation accuracy with 10-100x lower cost. Leveraging this pipeline, we introduce Step-GUI, a family of models (4B/8B) that achieves state-of-the-art GUI performance (8B: 80.2% AndroidWorld, 48.5% OSWorld, 62.6% ScreenShot-Pro) while maintaining robust general capabilities. As GUI agent capabilities improve, practical deployment demands standardized interfaces across heterogeneous devices while protecting user privacy. To this end, we propose GUI-MCP, the first Model Context Protocol for GUI automation with hierarchical architecture that combines low-level atomic operations and high-level task delegation to local specialist models, enabling high-privacy execution where sensitive data stays on-device. Finally, to assess whether agents can handle authentic everyday usage, we introduce AndroidDaily, a benchmark grounded in real-world mobile usage patterns with 3146 static actions and 235 end-to-end tasks across high-frequency daily scenarios (8B: static 89.91%, end-to-end 52.50%). Our work advances the development of practical GUI agents and demonstrates strong potential for real-world deployment in everyday digital interactions.

Key facts. Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 53 of its 61 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Dec 2025.

Builds on

53 of 61 references.

Closest ancestors · 15

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025ScaleCUA: Scaling Open-Source Computer Use Agents with Cross-Platform Data18 Sep
  2. 2025MobileRL: Online Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Mobile GUI Agents10 Sep
  3. 2025UI-TARS-2 Technical Report: Advancing GUI Agent with Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning2 Sep
  4. 2025UItron: Foundational GUI Agent with Advanced Perception and Planning29 Aug
  5. 2025Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automation21 Aug
  6. 2025OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agents12 Aug
  7. 2025MMBench-GUI: Hierarchical Multi-Platform Evaluation Framework for GUI Agents25 Jul
  8. 2025ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Use4 Apr
  9. 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agents1 Apr
  10. 2025PC-Agent: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Collaboration Framework for Complex Task Automation on PC20 Feb
  11. 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents21 Jan
  12. 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents30 Oct
3 more
  1. 2024LlamaTouch: A Faithful and Scalable Testbed for Mobile UI Task Automation12 Apr
  2. 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments11 Apr
  3. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents17 Jan

Other references · 38

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  3. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  4. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
  5. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
  6. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  7. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  8. 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,534
  9. 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,105
  10. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,582
  11. 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,419
  12. 2022STaR: Bootstrapping Reasoning With Reasoningcited by 895
26 more
  1. 2024Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?cited by 893
  2. 2023Reinforced Self-Training (ReST) for Language Modelingcited by 486
  3. 2023OCRBench: On the Hidden Mystery of OCR in Large Multimodal Modelscited by 466
  4. 2023V*: Guided Visual Search as a Core Mechanism in Multimodal LLMscited by 459
  5. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 450
  6. 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
  7. 2023Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Controlcited by 314
  8. 2022Large Language Models are Better Reasoners with Self-Verificationcited by 304
  9. 2024Quiet-STaR: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Think Before Speakingcited by 292
  10. 2024LogicVista: Multimodal LLM Logical Reasoning Benchmark in Visual Contextscited by 240
  11. 2024Tool Learning with Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 221
  12. 2023DDCoT: Duty-Distinct Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Multimodal Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 124
  13. 2024VisualWebBench: How Far Have Multimodal LLMs Evolved in Web Page Understanding and Grounding?cited by 98
  14. 2021UIBert: Learning Generic Multimodal Representations for UI Understandingcited by 93
  15. 2022A Dataset for Interactive Vision-Language Navigation with Unknown Command Feasibilitycited by 61
  16. 2023Synthetic Prompting: Generating Chain-of-Thought Demonstrations for Large Language Modelscited by 61
  17. 2025SimpleVQA: Multimodal Factuality Evaluation for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 61
  18. 2025UFO2: The Desktop AgentOScited by 38
  19. 2025PhyX: Does Your Model Have the "Wits" for Physical Reasoning?cited by 37
  20. 2025CoAct-1: Computer-using Multi-Agent System with Coding Actionscited by 33
  21. 2025RAG-MCP: Mitigating Prompt Bloat in LLM Tool Selection via Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 26
  22. 2025CE-GPPO: Coordinating Entropy via Gradient-Preserving Clipping Policy Optimization in Reinforcement Learningcited by 23
  23. 2025AutoGUI: Scaling GUI Grounding with Automatic Functionality Annotations from LLMscited by 18
  24. 2024Mitigating Hallucinations in Large Language Models via Self-Refinement-Enhanced Knowledge Retrievalcited by 16
  25. 2025Code2MCP: Transforming Code Repositories into MCP Servicescited by 10
  26. 2025CoT-RAG: Integrating Chain of Thought and Retrieval-Augmented Generation to Enhance Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 37.

38 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025MAI-UI Technical Report: Real-World Centric Foundation GUI Agentscited by 88
  2. 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agentscited by 72
  3. 2026EvoCUA: Evolving Computer Use Agents via Learning from Scalable Synthetic Experiencecited by 51
  4. 2026UI-Venus-1.5 Technical Reportcited by 39
  5. 2026STEP3-VL-10B Technical Reportcited by 28
  6. 2026KnowU-Bench: Towards Interactive, Proactive, and Personalized Mobile Agent Evaluationcited by 19
  7. 2026OmegaUse: Building a General-Purpose GUI Agent for Autonomous Task Executioncited by 13
  8. 2026DM0: An Embodied-Native Vision-Language-Action Model towards Physical AIcited by 12
  9. 2026UI-Mem: Self-Evolving Experience Memory for Online Reinforcement Learning in Mobile GUI Agentscited by 11
  10. 2026UI-Voyager: A Self-Evolving GUI Agent Learning via Failed Experiencecited by 11
  11. 2026OpenMobile: Building Open Mobile Agents with Task and Trajectory Synthesiscited by 10
  12. 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agentscited by 10
26 more
  1. 2026MementoGUI: Learning Agentic Multimodal Memory Control for Long-Horizon GUI Agentscited by 9
  2. 2026AndroidDaily: A Verifiable Benchmark for Mobile GUI Agents on Real-World Closed-Source Applicationscited by 8
  3. 2026Qwen-UI-Agent Technical Report: Toward Next-Generation Real-World Centric Foundation GUI Agentscited by 8
  4. 2026UI-MOPD: Multi-Platform On-Policy Distillation for Unified GUI Agentscited by 7
  5. 2026VenusBench-Mobile: A Challenging and User-Centric Benchmark for Mobile GUI Agents with Capability Diagnosticscited by 5
  6. 2026Video2GUI: Synthesizing Large-Scale Interaction Trajectories for Generalized GUI Agent Pretrainingcited by 5
  7. 2026MobileForge: Annotation-Free Adaptation for Mobile GUI Agents with Hierarchical Feedback-Guided Policy Optimizationcited by 5
  8. 2026Xiaomi-GUI-0 Technical Reportcited by 5
  9. 2026What Memory Do GUI Agents Really Need? From Passive Records to Active Task-Driving Statescited by 5
  10. 2026PhoneBuddy: Training Open Models for Agentic Phone Usecited by 4
  11. 2026Agentic Reward Modeling: Verifying GUI Agent via Progressive Trajectory-Grounded Interactioncited by 3
  12. 2026POINTS-GUI-G: GUI-Grounding Journeycited by 3
  13. 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitantscited by 3
  14. 2026EvoCUA-1.5: Online Reinforcement Learning for Multi-turn Computer-Use Agentscited by 2
  15. 2026DocOS: Towards Proactive Document-Guided Actions in GUI Agentscited by 1
  16. 2026The Next Screenshot Knows: Gated Hindsight Distillation for Mobile GUI Agentscited by 1
  17. 2026UI-Venus-2 Technical Reportcited by 1
  18. 2026Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliabilitycited by 0
  19. 2026BlueLM-GUI Technical Report: A Real-Device-Centric Flywheel for Self-Improving Mobile GUI Agentscited by 0
  20. 2026LLaDA-UI: Bringing Block-wise Diffusion to Vision-Language GUI Agentscited by 0
  21. 2026Learning from Reliable Negatives: Confidence-Anchored Test-Time Adaptation for GUI Groundingcited by 0
  22. 2026MATE: Policy-Aware Security Auditing for Mobile Agents via Synthesis-Driven Trajectory Learningcited by 0
  23. 2026GameHorizon Suite: Multi-Horizon Data and Evaluation in Gameplaycited by 0
  24. 2026From Tapping to Hopping: Augmenting Mobile GUI Agents with App-Native Deeplinkscited by 0
  25. 2026Learning Reliable GUI Agents under Imperfect Priorscited by 0
  26. 2026ComputerSD: Online Self-Distillation from Real-Time Feedback for Computer-Use Agentscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025TongUI: Internet-Scale Trajectories from Multimodal Web Tutorials for Generalized GUI Agents
  2. 2026MemGUI-Agent: An End-to-End Long-Horizon Mobile GUI Agent with Proactive Context Management
  3. 2025GUI-Bee: Align GUI Action Grounding to Novel Environments via Autonomous Exploration
  4. 2024OS-Genesis: Automating GUI Agent Trajectory Construction via Reverse Task Synthesis
  5. 2026Building Autonomous GUI Navigation via Agentic-Q Estimation and Step-Wise Policy Optimization
  6. 2026ANCHOR: Branch-Point Data Generation for GUI Agents
  7. 2026StepReflect: Structured UI Transition Reflection for Mobile GUI Agents
  8. 2025GUI-Shift: Enhancing VLM-Based GUI Agents through Self-supervised Reinforcement Learning