mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

EvoCUA: Evolving Computer Use Agents via Learning from Scalable Synthetic Experience

arXiv 2601.15876 ↗First posted 22 Jan 2026cs.AIcited by 51

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

The development of native computer-use agents (CUA) represents a significant leap in multimodal AI. However, their potential is currently bottlenecked by the constraints of static data scaling. Existing paradigms relying primarily on passive imitation of static datasets struggle to capture the intricate causal dynamics inherent in long-horizon computer tasks. In this work, we introduce EvoCUA, a native computer use agentic model. Unlike static imitation, EvoCUA integrates data generation and policy optimization into a self-sustaining evolutionary cycle. To mitigate data scarcity, we develop a verifiable synthesis engine that autonomously generates diverse tasks coupled with executable validators. To enable large-scale experience acquisition, we design a scalable infrastructure orchestrating tens of thousands of asynchronous sandbox rollouts. Building on these massive trajectories, we propose an iterative evolving learning strategy to efficiently internalize this experience. This mechanism dynamically regulates policy updates by identifying capability boundaries -- reinforcing successful routines while transforming failure trajectories into rich supervision through error analysis and self-correction. Empirical evaluations on the OSWorld benchmark demonstrate that EvoCUA achieves a success rate of 56.7%, establishing a new open-source state-of-the-art. Notably, EvoCUA significantly outperforms the previous best open-source model, OpenCUA-72B (45.0%), and surpasses leading closed-weights models such as UI-TARS-2 (53.1%). Crucially, our results underscore the generalizability of this approach: the evolving paradigm driven by learning from experience yields consistent performance gains across foundation models of varying scales, establishing a robust and scalable path for advancing native agent capabilities.

Key facts. Cited by 51 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 28 of its 33 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

Builds on

28 of 33 references.

References · 28

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  3. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  4. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
  5. 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,534
  6. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,582
  7. 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,134
  8. 2024Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?cited by 893
  9. 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 584
  10. 2024MMMU-Pro: A More Robust Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmarkcited by 494
  11. 2023OCRBench: On the Hidden Mystery of OCR in Large Multimodal Modelscited by 466
  12. 2025Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Trainingcited by 442
16 more
  1. 2024Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personascited by 397
  2. 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agentscited by 373
  3. 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agentscited by 370
  4. 2024Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoning: Progresses and Challengescited by 283
  5. 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 271
  6. 2024Step-DPO: Step-wise Preference Optimization for Long-chain Reasoning of LLMscited by 265
  7. 2025ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Usecited by 246
  8. 2024ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agentcited by 226
  9. 2025UI-TARS-2 Technical Report: Advancing GUI Agent with Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 205
  10. 2025Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automationcited by 183
  11. 2025OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agentscited by 151
  12. 2025Scaling Computer-Use Grounding via User Interface Decomposition and Synthesiscited by 132
  13. 2025Agent Learning via Early Experiencecited by 79
  14. 2025ScaleCUA: Scaling Open-Source Computer Use Agents with Cross-Platform Datacited by 58
  15. 2025Step-GUI Technical Reportcited by 38
  16. 2025UltraCUA: A Foundation Model for Computer Use Agents with Hybrid Actioncited by 30

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 51.

51 papers.

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  1. 2026OpenClaw-RL: Train Any Agent Simply by Talkingcited by 83
  2. 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agentscited by 72
  3. 2026LongCat-Next: Lexicalizing Modalities as Discrete Tokenscited by 30
  4. 2026Qwen-AgentWorld: Language World Models for General Agentscited by 22
  5. 2026CUA-Gym: Scaling Verifiable Training Environments and Tasks for Computer-Use Agentscited by 21
  6. 2026When Benign Inputs Lead to Severe Harms: Eliciting Unsafe Unintended Behaviors of Computer-Use Agentscited by 13
  7. 2026The Blind Spot of Agent Safety: How Benign User Instructions Expose Critical Vulnerabilities in Computer-Use Agentscited by 12
  8. 2026UI-Voyager: A Self-Evolving GUI Agent Learning via Failed Experiencecited by 11
  9. 2026OpenMobile: Building Open Mobile Agents with Task and Trajectory Synthesiscited by 10
  10. 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agentscited by 10
  11. 2026MementoGUI: Learning Agentic Multimodal Memory Control for Long-Horizon GUI Agentscited by 9
  12. 2026OpenComputer: Verifiable Software Worlds for Computer-Use Agentscited by 9
38 more
  1. 2026AndroidDaily: A Verifiable Benchmark for Mobile GUI Agents on Real-World Closed-Source Applicationscited by 8
  2. 2026UI-MOPD: Multi-Platform On-Policy Distillation for Unified GUI Agentscited by 7
  3. 2026SCALECUA: Scaling Computer Use Agents with Verifiable Task Synthesis and Efficient Online RLcited by 7
  4. 2026SPADE: Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environmentscited by 6
  5. 2026RSIAgent: Autonomous Exploration for Recursive Self-improvement in New Environmentscited by 5
  6. 2026VLAA-GUI: Knowing When to Stop, Recover, and Search, A Modular Framework for GUI Automationcited by 4
  7. 2026GUI vs. CLI: Execution Bottlenecks in Screen-Only and Skill-Mediated Computer-Use Agentscited by 3
  8. 2026HyMobileAgent: Data-Environment Co-Scaling for Efficient GUI Agentscited by 3
  9. 2026MAGA: Multi-Platform Self-Fusion of GUI Agents via Structured Action Distillationcited by 3
  10. 2026GUI-Perturbed: Domain Randomization Reveals Systematic Brittleness in GUI Grounding Modelscited by 2
  11. 2026Training Computer Use Agents to Assess the Usability of Graphical User Interfacescited by 2
  12. 2026Interactive Reward Agent: GUI Task Evaluation via Environment-State Verificationcited by 2
  13. 2026StepJack: Benchmarking Computer-Use Agent Safety Against Multi-Step Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 2
  14. 2026Are GUI Agents Focused Enough? Automated Distraction via Semantic-level UI Element Injectioncited by 1
  15. 2026Benchmarking and Improving GUI Agents in High-Dynamic Environmentscited by 1
  16. 2026What Happens Before Decoding? Prefill Determines GUI Grounding in VLMscited by 1
  17. 2026Learn from Weaknesses: Automated Domain Specialization for Small Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
  18. 2026StainFlow: Entity-Stain Tracking and Evidence Linking for Process Rewards in GUI Agentscited by 1
  19. 2026LabOSBench: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents for Scientific Instrument Controlcited by 1
  20. 2026One Forward Beats Two: InnerZoom for Accurate and Efficient GUI Groundingcited by 1
  21. 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Designcited by 1
  22. 2026UI-Mate: Advancing Open-Weight Foundation GUI Agents with In-Context Demonstrationscited by 1
  23. 2026UI-Venus-2 Technical Reportcited by 1
  24. 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
  25. 2026Reflect, Revise, Reuse: Training-Free Skill Evolution for GUI Agentscited by 1
  26. 2026Covering Human Action Space for Computer Use: Data Synthesis and Benchmarkcited by 0
  27. 2026AliyunConsoleAgent: Training Web Agents in Real-World Cloud Environments via Distillation and Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  28. 2026Self-Evolution for Multi-Turn Tool-Calling Agents via Divergence-Point Preference Learningcited by 0
  29. 2026Rethinking Inference-Time Scaling in Local Computer-Use Agents: Failure Modes and Compute Tradeoffscited by 0
  30. 2026LocalLSTC: A Long Short-Term Control Architecture for Locally Deployed GUI Agentscited by 0
  31. 2026BlueLM-GUI Technical Report: A Real-Device-Centric Flywheel for Self-Improving Mobile GUI Agentscited by 0
  32. 2026MintAct: A Unified Visual Agent for Digital Environmentscited by 0
  33. 2026Beyond Task Completion: Training Capable and Safe Computer-Use Agentscited by 0
  34. 2026How Many Pixels Is a Digit Worth? Place-Aware Coordinate Entropy for GUI Agent Confidence Estimationcited by 0
  35. 2026WebPageBench: Event-Level Verification and Controlled UI-Variant Generation for Web Agentscited by 0
  36. 2026AnyAct: Universal Action for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 0
  37. 2026Absorbed in Inertia: Activation Analysis for Computer-Use Agentscited by 0
  38. 2026HybridCUA: Learning to Orchestrate GUI and CLI for Computer-Use Agentscited by 0

50 most cited of 51 All 51 (JSON)

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  1. 2026EvoCUA-1.5: Online Reinforcement Learning for Multi-turn Computer-Use Agents
  2. 2025Evolving in Tasks: Empowering the Multi-modality Large Language Model as the Computer Use Agent
  3. 2025SEAgent: Self-Evolving Computer Use Agent with Autonomous Learning from Experience
  4. 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfer
  5. 2026EvoDS: Self-Evolving Autonomous Data Science Agent with Skill Learning and Context Management
  6. 2026SEA-Eval: A Benchmark for Evaluating Self-Evolving Agents Beyond Episodic Assessment
  7. 2026Mem2Evolve: Towards Self-Evolving Agents via Co-Evolutionary Capability Expansion and Experience Distillation
  8. 2026Echoverse: Deep, Evolving Environments for Training Computer-Use Agents at Scale