Darwinian Memory: A Training-Free Self-Regulating Memory System for GUI Agent Evolution
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mismatch between high-level intent and low-level execution, and context pollution where the static accumulation of outdated experiences drives agents into hallucination.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
- 2025EchoTrail-GUI: Building Actionable Memory for GUI Agents via Critic-Guided Self-Exploration22 Dec
- 2025UI-Venus Technical Report: Building High-performance UI Agents with RFT14 Aug
- 2025AndroidGen: Building an Android Language Agent under Data Scarcity27 Apr
- 2025InfiGUI-R1: Advancing Multimodal GUI Agents from Reactive Actors to Deliberative Reasoners19 Apr
- 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agents1 Apr
- 2025Advancing Mobile GUI Agents: A Verifier-Driven Approach to Practical Deployment20 Mar
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents21 Jan
- 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents7 Oct
- 2024DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning14 Jun
- 2024OmniACT: A Dataset and Benchmark for Enabling Multimodal Generalist Autonomous Agents for Desktop and Web27 Feb
- 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perception29 Jan
- 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents17 Jan
1 more
Other references · 21
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
- 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
- 2024Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of contextcited by 3,175
- 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
- 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 814
- 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memorycited by 722
- 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 450
- 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
- 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 271
- 2025R-Zero: Self-Evolving Reasoning LLM from Zero Datacited by 210
- 2023Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Controlcited by 180
9 more
- 2024UFO: A UI-Focused Agent for Windows OS Interactioncited by 147
- 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 136
- 2024Cradle: Empowering Foundation Agents Towards General Computer Controlcited by 114
- 2025MemInsight: Autonomous Memory Augmentation for LLM Agentscited by 84
- 2025MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory Systemscited by 81
- 2025VisPlay: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models from Imagescited by 42
- 2025Guided Self-Evolving LLMs with Minimal Human Supervisioncited by 33
- 2025R2D2: Remembering, Replaying and Dynamic Decision Making with a Reflective Agentic Memorycited by 14
- 2025H2R: Hierarchical Hindsight Reflection for Multi-Task LLM Agentscited by 8
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026Governing Evolving Memory in LLM Agents: Risks, Mechanisms, and the Stability and Safety Governed Memory (SSGM) Frameworkcited by 16
- 2026StructAgent: Harness Long-horizon Digital Agents with Unified Causal Structurecited by 4
- 2026CrystalMem: Elastic Memory for Self-Evolving LLM Agents via Knowledge Crystallizationcited by 2
- 2026EchoPath: Execution-Level Replayable Memory for GUI Agentscited by 1
- 2026PastForward: Faster On-Device GUI Agents via Computational Experience Reusecited by 0
- 2026One Rollout Is All You Get: Fully Test-Time Adaptation for GUI Agentscited by 0
- 2026DeltaReplay: Task-Relative Memory Reuse for Mobile GUI Agentscited by 0
- 2026DeltaReplay: Task-Relative Memory Reuse for Mobile GUI Agents8 Oct 2026
- 2026One Rollout Is All You Get: Fully Test-Time Adaptation for GUI Agents28 Sep 2026
- 2026PastForward: Faster On-Device GUI Agents via Computational Experience Reuse26 Sep 2026
- 2026EchoPath: Execution-Level Replayable Memory for GUI Agents15 Sep 2026
- 2026CrystalMem: Elastic Memory for Self-Evolving LLM Agents via Knowledge Crystallization31 Jul 2026
- 2026StructAgent: Harness Long-horizon Digital Agents with Unified Causal Structure13 Jul 2026
- 2026Governing Evolving Memory in LLM Agents: Risks, Mechanisms, and the Stability and Safety Governed Memory (SSGM) Framework12 Mar 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026SE-GA: Memory-Augmented Self-Evolution for GUI Agents
- 2026MAGNET: Towards Adaptive GUI Agents with Memory-Driven Knowledge Evolution
- 2025AppAgentX: Evolving GUI Agents as Proficient Smartphone Users
- 2026Darwin Mobile Agent: A Roadmap for Self-Evolution
- 2026GenericAgent: A Token-Efficient Self-Evolving LLM Agent via Contextual Information Density Maximization (V1.0)
- 2026From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory Mechanisms
- 2026Hybrid Self-evolving Structured Memory for GUI Agents
- 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interaction