Audited Skill-Graph Self-Improvement for Agentic LLMs via Verifiable Rewards, Experience Synthesis, and Continual Memory
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution
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Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement learning is increasingly used to transform large language models into agentic systems that act over long horizons, invoke tools, and manage memory under partial observability. While recent work has demonstrated performance gains through tool learning, verifiable rewards, and continual training, deployed self-improving agents raise unresolved security and governance challenges: optimization pressure can incentivize reward hacking, behavioral drift is difficult to audit or reproduce, and improvements are often entangled in opaque parameter updates rather than reusable, verifiable artifacts. This paper proposes Audited Skill-Graph Self-Improvement (ASG-SI), a framework that treats self-improvement as iterative compilation of an agent into a growing, auditable skill graph. Each candidate improvement is extracted from successful trajectories, normalized into a skill with an explicit interface, and promoted only after passing verifier-backed replay and contract checks. Rewards are decomposed into reconstructible components derived from replayable evidence, enabling independent audit of promotion decisions and learning signals. ASG-SI further integrates experience synthesis for scalable stress testing and continual memory control to preserve long-horizon performance under bounded context. We present a complete system architecture, threat model, and security analysis, and provide a fully runnable reference implementation that demonstrates verifier-backed reward construction, skill compilation, audit logging, and measurable improvement under continual task streams. ASG-SI reframes agentic self-improvement as accumulation of verifiable, reusable capabilities, offering a practical path toward reproducible evaluation and operational governance of self-improving AI agents.
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 8 of its 11 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Dec 2025.
Builds on
8 of 11 references.
Closest ancestors · 1
Same direction, newest first
Other references · 7
- 2025Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards Implicitly Incentivizes Correct Reasoning in Base LLMscited by 276
- 2025Memory-R1: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents to Manage and Utilize Memories via Reinforcement Learningcited by 220
- 2025The Landscape of Agentic Reinforcement Learning for LLMs: A Surveycited by 195
- 2025Agent Lightning: Train ANY AI Agents with Reinforcement Learningcited by 94
- 2025AgentRL: Scaling Agentic Reinforcement Learning with a Multi-Turn, Multi-Task Frameworkcited by 58
- 2025A Benchmark for Evaluating Outcome-Driven Constraint Violations in Autonomous AI Agentscited by 12
- 2025Position: The Hidden Costs and Measurement Gaps of Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardscited by 11
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.
8 papers.
- 2026SkillClaw: Let Skills Evolve Collectively with Agentic Evolvercited by 76
- 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applicationscited by 17
- 2026SkillGraph: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration with Multimodal Graph Topologycited by 8
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
- 2026Understanding Rollout Error in Graph World Modelscited by 3
- 2026Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026You Don't Need To Stay in The Loop: An Agentic Robotics Loop for Robot-Policy Improvementcited by 1
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedback13 Aug 2026
- 2026You Don't Need To Stay in The Loop: An Agentic Robotics Loop for Robot-Policy Improvement2 Aug 2026
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Libraries11 Jul 2026
- 2026Understanding Rollout Error in Graph World Models26 Jun 2026
- 2026Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agents29 May 2026
- 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications8 May 2026
- 2026SkillGraph: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration with Multimodal Graph Topology19 Apr 2026
- 2026SkillClaw: Let Skills Evolve Collectively with Agentic Evolver9 Apr 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution
- 2026R2 Flow: Recursive Self-Improvement via Recursive Skill Evolution
- 2026S3Gym: Can LLMs Turn Self-Testing and Self-Judging into Self-Improvement?
- 2026SkillAdaptor: Self-Adapting Skills for LLM Agents from Trajectories
- 2026SkillForge: Evolving Verifiable Skills for Reinforcement Learning Agents
- 2026MASkills: Continual Skills Optimization for Multi-Agent LLM Systems
- 2026SkillGen: Verified Inference-Time Agent Skill Synthesis
- 2026Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agents