# AWPO: Enhancing Tool-Use of Large Language Models through Adaptive Integration of Reasoning Rewards

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19126 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19126/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 32 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reinforcement learning for reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reinforcement-learning-for-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16789/) (2023)
- [MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01574/) (2024)
- [A Survey on LLM-as-a-Judge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15594/) (2024)
- [Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20783/) (2025)
- [Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15334/) (2023)
- [Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04475/) (2024)
- [API-Bank: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Tool-Augmented LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08244/) (2023)
- [From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipeline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11939/) (2024)
- [Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10978/) (2025)
- [GLM-4.5: Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding (ARC) Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06471/) (2025)
- [ToolRL: Reward is All Tool Learning Needs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13958/) (2025)
- [SWIFT:A Scalable lightWeight Infrastructure for Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05517/) (2024)
- [MT-Bench-101: A Fine-Grained Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Multi-Turn Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14762/) (2024)
- [ToolACE: Winning the Points of LLM Function Calling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00920/) (2024)
- [xLAM: A Family of Large Action Models to Empower AI Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03215/) (2024)
- [SRFT: A Single-Stage Method with Supervised and Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19767/) (2025)
- [ExGRPO: Learning to Reason from Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02245/) (2025)
- [BAPO: Stabilizing Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for LLMs via Balanced Policy Optimization with Adaptive Clipping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18927/) (2025)
- [Synthetic Data Generation & Multi-Step RL for Reasoning & Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04736/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Scoring Bias in LLM-as-a-Judge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22316/) (2025)
- [Promoting Efficient Reasoning with Verifiable Stepwise Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10293/) (2025)
- [Inpainting-Guided Policy Optimization for Diffusion Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10396/) (2025)
- [ResT: Reshaping Token-Level Policy Gradients for Tool-Use Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21826/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Robust Tool Use via Fission-GRPO: Learning to Recover from Execution Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15625/) (2026)
- [When Self-Belief Misleads: Active Label Acquisition for Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25864/) (2026)
- [Implicit Hierarchical GRPO: Decoupling Tool Invocation from Execution for Tool-Integrated Mathematical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18500/) (2026)
- [GenesisFunc: Multi-Agent Data Generation for Accurate and Generalizable Function-Calling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28835/) (2026)
- [SLCA-GRPO: Resolving Cross-Segment Credit Misattribution in Tool-Calling RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29050/) (2026)
- [TGRL: Temperature-Grouped Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Exploration in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33589/) (2026)
- [Choosing Before Acting: Comparative Value Estimation for Long-Horizon Tool-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02330/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While Reinforcement Learning (RL) shows promise in training tool-use Large Language Models (LLMs) using verifiable outcome rewards, existing methods largely overlook the potential of reasoning rewards based on chain-of-thought quality for better tool utilization. Furthermore, na"ively combining reasoning and outcome rewards may yield suboptimal performance or conflict with the primary optimization objective. To address this, we propose Advantage-Weighted Policy Optimization (AWPO), a principled RL framework that adaptively integrates reasoning rewards into advantage estimation to improve tool-use performance. AWPO incorporates variance-aware gating and difficulty-aware weighting to adaptively modulate advantages from reasoning signals based on group-relative statistics, alongside a tailored clipping mechanism for stable optimization. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AWPO achieves state-of-the-art performance across standard tool-use benchmarks, significantly outperforming strong baselines and leading closed-source models in challenging multi-turn scenarios. Notably, with exceptional parameter efficiency, our 4B model surpasses Grok-4 by 16.0% in multi-turn accuracy while preserving generalization capability on the out-of-distribution MMLU-Pro benchmark.