mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Darwinian Memory: A Training-Free Self-Regulating Memory System for GUI Agent Evolution

arXiv 2601.22528 ↗First posted 30 Jan 2026cs.AIcited by 7

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal Large Language Model (MLLM) agents facilitate Graphical User Interface (GUI) automation but struggle with long-horizon, cross-application tasks due to limited context windows. While memory systems provide a viable solution, existing paradigms struggle to adapt to dynamic GUI environments, suffering from a granularity mismatch between high-level intent and low-level execution, and context pollution where the static accumulation of outdated experiences drives agents into hallucination. To address these bottlenecks, we propose the Darwinian Memory System (DMS), a self-evolving architecture that constructs memory as a dynamic ecosystem governed by the law of survival of the fittest. DMS decomposes complex trajectories into independent, reusable units for compositional flexibility, and implements Utility-driven Natural Selection to track survival value, actively pruning suboptimal paths and inhibiting high-risk plans. This evolutionary pressure compels the agent to derive superior strategies. Extensive experiments on real-world multi-app benchmarks validate that DMS boosts general-purpose MLLMs without training costs or architectural overhead, achieving average gains of 18.0% in success rate and 33.9% in execution stability, while reducing task latency, establishing it as an effective self-evolving memory system for GUI tasks.

Key facts. Cited by 7 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 34 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2026.

Builds on

34 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 13

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025EchoTrail-GUI: Building Actionable Memory for GUI Agents via Critic-Guided Self-Exploration22 Dec
  2. 2025UI-Venus Technical Report: Building High-performance UI Agents with RFT14 Aug
  3. 2025AndroidGen: Building an Android Language Agent under Data Scarcity27 Apr
  4. 2025InfiGUI-R1: Advancing Multimodal GUI Agents from Reactive Actors to Deliberative Reasoners19 Apr
  5. 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agents1 Apr
  6. 2025Advancing Mobile GUI Agents: A Verifier-Driven Approach to Practical Deployment20 Mar
  7. 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents21 Jan
  8. 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents7 Oct
  9. 2024DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning14 Jun
  10. 2024OmniACT: A Dataset and Benchmark for Enabling Multimodal Generalist Autonomous Agents for Desktop and Web27 Feb
  11. 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perception29 Jan
  12. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents17 Jan
1 more
  1. 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents14 Dec

Other references · 21

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  2. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
  3. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  4. 2024Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of contextcited by 3,175
  5. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  6. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 814
  7. 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memorycited by 722
  8. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 450
  9. 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
  10. 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 271
  11. 2025R-Zero: Self-Evolving Reasoning LLM from Zero Datacited by 210
  12. 2023Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Controlcited by 180
9 more
  1. 2024UFO: A UI-Focused Agent for Windows OS Interactioncited by 147
  2. 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 136
  3. 2024Cradle: Empowering Foundation Agents Towards General Computer Controlcited by 114
  4. 2025MemInsight: Autonomous Memory Augmentation for LLM Agentscited by 84
  5. 2025MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory Systemscited by 81
  6. 2025VisPlay: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models from Imagescited by 42
  7. 2025Guided Self-Evolving LLMs with Minimal Human Supervisioncited by 33
  8. 2025R2D2: Remembering, Replaying and Dynamic Decision Making with a Reflective Agentic Memorycited by 14
  9. 2025H2R: Hierarchical Hindsight Reflection for Multi-Task LLM Agentscited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.

7 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SE-GA: Memory-Augmented Self-Evolution for GUI Agents
  2. 2026MAGNET: Towards Adaptive GUI Agents with Memory-Driven Knowledge Evolution
  3. 2025AppAgentX: Evolving GUI Agents as Proficient Smartphone Users
  4. 2026Darwin Mobile Agent: A Roadmap for Self-Evolution
  5. 2026GenericAgent: A Token-Efficient Self-Evolving LLM Agent via Contextual Information Density Maximization (V1.0)
  6. 2026From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory Mechanisms
  7. 2026Hybrid Self-evolving Structured Memory for GUI Agents
  8. 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interaction