Skill-Pro: Learning Reusable Skills from Experience via Non-Parametric PPO for LLM Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution
Abstract (arXiv)
LLM-driven agents excel at sequential decision-making but often rely on on-the-fly reasoning, re-deriving solutions even in recurring scenarios. This insufficient experience reuse leads to computational redundancy and instability. To bridge this gap, we propose Skill-Pro, a framework enabling agents to autonomously learn reusable procedural skills from interaction experiences without parameter updates. By formalizing a Skill-MDP, Skill-Pro transforms passive episodic narratives into executable Skills defined by activation, execution, and termination conditions to ensure executability. To achieve reliable reusability without capability degradation, we introduce Non-Parametric PPO, which leverages semantic gradients for high-quality candidate generation and a PPO Gate for robust Skill verification. Through score-based maintenance, Skill-Pro sustains compact, high-quality procedural memory. Experimental results across in-domain, cross-task, and cross-agent scenarios demonstrate that Skill-Pro achieves superior reuse rates and significant gains with extreme memory compression. Visualized evolutionary trajectories and Skill distributions further reveal how Skill-Pro transparently accumulates, refines, and reuses procedural knowledge to facilitate long-term autonomy.
Key facts. Cited by 44 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 42 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.
Builds on
42 of 50 references.
References · 42
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- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
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30 more
- 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
- 2023Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflectioncited by 1,800
- 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,143
- 2022Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Modelscited by 1,054
- 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,000
- 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 814
- 2023An Empirical Study of Catastrophic Forgetting in Large Language Models During Continual Fine-tuningcited by 622
- 2025GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learningcited by 449
- 2023Cognitive Architectures for Language Agentscited by 422
- 2024Agent Workflow Memorycited by 342
- 2023Ghost in the Minecraft: Generally Capable Agents for Open-World Environments via Large Language Models with Text-based Knowledge and Memorycited by 288
- 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agentscited by 285
- 2024HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Modelscited by 273
- 2024Continual Learning of Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 228
- 2025MEM1: Learning to Synergize Memory and Reasoning for Efficient Long-Horizon Agentscited by 226
- 2025EvolveR: Self-Evolving LLM Agents through an Experience-Driven Lifecyclecited by 129
- 2025Memento: Fine-tuning LLM Agents without Fine-tuning LLMscited by 119
- 2024Cradle: Empowering Foundation Agents Towards General Computer Controlcited by 114
- 2026MemRL: Self-Evolving Agents via Runtime Reinforcement Learning on Episodic Memorycited by 113
- 2025G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 112
- 2025MemGen: Weaving Generative Latent Memory for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 99
- 2025Memp: Exploring Agent Procedural Memorycited by 88
- 2024From Isolated Conversations to Hierarchical Schemas: Dynamic Tree Memory Representation for LLMscited by 77
- 2024Larimar: Large Language Models with Episodic Memory Controlcited by 53
- 2025FLEX: Continuous Agent Evolution via Forward Learning from Experiencecited by 51
- 2025LEGOMem: Modular Procedural Memory for Multi-agent LLM Systems for Workflow Automationcited by 39
- 2025Look Back to Reason Forward: Revisitable Memory for Long-Context LLM Agentscited by 37
- 2025Learning on the Job: An Experience-Driven Self-Evolving Agent for Long-Horizon Taskscited by 22
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- 2025Beyond Fact Retrieval: Episodic Memory for RAG with Generative Semantic Workspacescited by 6
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 44.
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- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settingscited by 62
- 2026Memento-Skills: Let Agents Design Agentscited by 56
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnessescited by 54
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revisioncited by 21
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026EmbodiSkill: Skill-Aware Reflection for Self-Evolving Embodied Agentscited by 12
- 2026Dynamic Skill Lifecycle Management for Agentic Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
- 2026UCOB: Learning to Utilize and Evolve Agentic Skills via Credit-Aware On-Policy Bidirectional Self-Distillationcited by 10
- 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfercited by 8
- 2026User as Code: Executable Memory for Personalized Agentscited by 7
- 2026SkillJuror: Measuring How Agent Skill Organization Changes Runtime Behaviorcited by 6
- 2026PreAct: Computer-Using Agents that Get Faster on Repeated Taskscited by 4
32 more
- 2026Organize then Retrieve: Hierarchical Memory Navigation for Efficient Agentscited by 3
- 2026LLM Agents Are Latent Context Managers: Eliciting Self-Managed Context via State Proprioceptioncited by 3
- 2026R^2-Mem: Reflective Experience for Memory Searchcited by 2
- 2026SkillPyramid: A Hierarchical Skill Consolidation Framework for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
- 2026Metis: Bridging Text and Code Memory for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
- 2026From Relevance to Execution Utility: Reward-Aware Dynamic Execution Gating for Skill-Based LLM Agentscited by 2
- 2026SKILLER: Language-Level Reinforcement Learning for Reusable Skill Extraction in Small Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Demystifying Agent Skills: Why They Work-Until They Don'tcited by 2
- 2026MEMOREPAIR: Barrier-First Cascade Repair in Agentic Memorycited by 1
- 2026MAP: A Map-then-Act Paradigm for Long-Horizon Interactive Agent Reasoningcited by 1
- 2026SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026Skill or Skip? Learning Selective Skill Invocation in Agentic Tasks via Dual-Granularity Preference Learningcited by 1
- 2026Progressive Agent Skill Generation via Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
- 2026SkillZip: Contract-Preserving Graph Compression for Scalable Agent Skill Librariescited by 1
- 2026When Not to Imitate: Boundary-Aware Skill Memory for Reliable Tool-Use LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026ERRAND: Budgeted Maintenance of Agent Memorycited by 1
- 2026Experience Memory Graph: One-Shot Error Correction for Agentscited by 0
- 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
- 2026AutoVerifier: Residual-Guided Non-Parametric Optimization for Reference-Based Answer Verificationcited by 0
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Securitycited by 0
- 2026AgentLeak: Cloning Stronger LLM Agent Capabilities onto Weaker Agents Beyond Skill Stealingcited by 0
- 2026GeoSkill:Experience-Driven Hierarchical Skill Learning with Collaborative Revision forGeospatialAgentscited by 0
- 2026Designer-RSI: Evolving Procedural Memory from User Traffic for Agentic Graphic Designcited by 0
- 2026SkillDRE: Dual-Stage Red-Team Evolution of Agent Skills via Pre-Execution and Runtime Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026ExpVoyager: Direct Experience Navigation for Dynamic Agent Skill Synthesiscited by 0
- 2026Semantic Projection for Continual Self-Evolution of Language Agentscited by 0
- 2026Rep2Skill: Representation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026SkillFM: Generating Skills for LLM Agents via Latent Flow Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Beyond the Shadows of Plato's Cave: Evaluating False Memory in Autonomous Agents via Counterfactual Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026SkillSpec: Consensus-Gated Agent Skill Evolution via Representation Specializationcited by 0
- 2026Efficient Task Adaptation in Large Language Models: A Survey of Weight-Based, Prompt-Based, and Embedding-Based Adaptationscited by 0
- 2026Efficient Task Adaptation in Large Language Models: A Survey of Weight-Based, Prompt-Based, and Embedding-Based Adaptations1 Oct 2026
- 2026SkillSpec: Consensus-Gated Agent Skill Evolution via Representation Specialization30 Sep 2026
- 2026Beyond the Shadows of Plato's Cave: Evaluating False Memory in Autonomous Agents via Counterfactual Reasoning30 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillFM: Generating Skills for LLM Agents via Latent Flow Matching30 Sep 2026
- 2026Rep2Skill: Representation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents30 Sep 2026
- 2026Semantic Projection for Continual Self-Evolution of Language Agents29 Sep 2026
- 2026ExpVoyager: Direct Experience Navigation for Dynamic Agent Skill Synthesis26 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillDRE: Dual-Stage Red-Team Evolution of Agent Skills via Pre-Execution and Runtime Feedback26 Sep 2026
- 2026Designer-RSI: Evolving Procedural Memory from User Traffic for Agentic Graphic Design18 Sep 2026
- 2026GeoSkill:Experience-Driven Hierarchical Skill Learning with Collaborative Revision forGeospatialAgents12 Sep 2026
- 2026AgentLeak: Cloning Stronger LLM Agent Capabilities onto Weaker Agents Beyond Skill Stealing7 Sep 2026
- 2026ERRAND: Budgeted Maintenance of Agent Memory2 Sep 2026
32 more
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026AutoVerifier: Residual-Guided Non-Parametric Optimization for Reference-Based Answer Verification26 Aug 2026
- 2026When Not to Imitate: Boundary-Aware Skill Memory for Reliable Tool-Use LLM Agents23 Aug 2026
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experience17 Aug 2026
- 2026Demystifying Agent Skills: Why They Work-Until They Don't14 Aug 2026
- 2026SKILLER: Language-Level Reinforcement Learning for Reusable Skill Extraction in Small Language Models11 Aug 2026
- 2026From Relevance to Execution Utility: Reward-Aware Dynamic Execution Gating for Skill-Based LLM Agents10 Aug 2026
- 2026Continual Learning in Transition6 Aug 2026
- 2026SkillZip: Contract-Preserving Graph Compression for Scalable Agent Skill Libraries6 Aug 2026
- 2026Progressive Agent Skill Generation via Reinforcement Learning3 Aug 2026
- 2026Experience Memory Graph: One-Shot Error Correction for Agents15 Jul 2026
- 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfer6 Jul 2026
- 2026LLM Agents Are Latent Context Managers: Eliciting Self-Managed Context via State Proprioception29 Jun 2026
- 2026UCOB: Learning to Utilize and Evolve Agentic Skills via Credit-Aware On-Policy Bidirectional Self-Distillation28 Jun 2026
- 2026Metis: Bridging Text and Code Memory for Self-Evolving Agents23 Jun 2026
- 2026PreAct: Computer-Using Agents that Get Faster on Repeated Tasks16 Jun 2026
- 2026User as Code: Executable Memory for Personalized Agents15 Jun 2026
- 2026Organize then Retrieve: Hierarchical Memory Navigation for Efficient Agents10 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillJuror: Measuring How Agent Skill Organization Changes Runtime Behavior10 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillPyramid: A Hierarchical Skill Consolidation Framework for Self-Evolving Agents2 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revision31 May 2026
- 2026Skill or Skip? Learning Selective Skill Invocation in Agentic Tasks via Dual-Granularity Preference Learning30 May 2026
- 2026SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agents28 May 2026
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolution18 May 2026
- 2026R^2-Mem: Reflective Experience for Memory Search13 May 2026
- 2026MAP: A Map-then-Act Paradigm for Long-Horizon Interactive Agent Reasoning13 May 2026
- 2026Dynamic Skill Lifecycle Management for Agentic Reinforcement Learning11 May 2026
- 2026EmbodiSkill: Skill-Aware Reflection for Self-Evolving Embodied Agents11 May 2026
- 2026MEMOREPAIR: Barrier-First Cascade Repair in Agentic Memory8 May 2026
- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settings6 Apr 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnesses26 Mar 2026
- 2026Memento-Skills: Let Agents Design Agents19 Mar 2026
- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settingscited by 62
- 2026Memento-Skills: Let Agents Design Agentscited by 56
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revisioncited by 21
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026EmbodiSkill: Skill-Aware Reflection for Self-Evolving Embodied Agentscited by 12
- 2026Dynamic Skill Lifecycle Management for Agentic Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
- 2026UCOB: Learning to Utilize and Evolve Agentic Skills via Credit-Aware On-Policy Bidirectional Self-Distillationcited by 10
- 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfercited by 8
- 2026SkillJuror: Measuring How Agent Skill Organization Changes Runtime Behaviorcited by 6
- 2026PreAct: Computer-Using Agents that Get Faster on Repeated Taskscited by 4
- 2026Organize then Retrieve: Hierarchical Memory Navigation for Efficient Agentscited by 3
- 2026LLM Agents Are Latent Context Managers: Eliciting Self-Managed Context via State Proprioceptioncited by 3
12 most cited of 28 All 28 (JSON)
- 2026SkillSpec: Consensus-Gated Agent Skill Evolution via Representation Specialization30 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillFM: Generating Skills for LLM Agents via Latent Flow Matching30 Sep 2026
- 2026Rep2Skill: Representation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents30 Sep 2026
- 2026Semantic Projection for Continual Self-Evolution of Language Agents29 Sep 2026
- 2026ExpVoyager: Direct Experience Navigation for Dynamic Agent Skill Synthesis26 Sep 2026
- 2026Designer-RSI: Evolving Procedural Memory from User Traffic for Agentic Graphic Design18 Sep 2026
- 2026AgentLeak: Cloning Stronger LLM Agent Capabilities onto Weaker Agents Beyond Skill Stealing7 Sep 2026
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026When Not to Imitate: Boundary-Aware Skill Memory for Reliable Tool-Use LLM Agents23 Aug 2026
- 2026Demystifying Agent Skills: Why They Work-Until They Don't14 Aug 2026
- 2026From Relevance to Execution Utility: Reward-Aware Dynamic Execution Gating for Skill-Based LLM Agents10 Aug 2026
- 2026SkillZip: Contract-Preserving Graph Compression for Scalable Agent Skill Libraries6 Aug 2026
12 newest of 28 All 28 (JSON)
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnessescited by 54
- 2026User as Code: Executable Memory for Personalized Agentscited by 7
- 2026R^2-Mem: Reflective Experience for Memory Searchcited by 2
- 2026SkillPyramid: A Hierarchical Skill Consolidation Framework for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
- 2026Metis: Bridging Text and Code Memory for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
- 2026SKILLER: Language-Level Reinforcement Learning for Reusable Skill Extraction in Small Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026ERRAND: Budgeted Maintenance of Agent Memorycited by 1
- 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
- 2026GeoSkill:Experience-Driven Hierarchical Skill Learning with Collaborative Revision forGeospatialAgentscited by 0
- 2026Beyond the Shadows of Plato's Cave: Evaluating False Memory in Autonomous Agents via Counterfactual Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Efficient Task Adaptation in Large Language Models: A Survey of Weight-Based, Prompt-Based, and Embedding-Based Adaptationscited by 0
- 2026Efficient Task Adaptation in Large Language Models: A Survey of Weight-Based, Prompt-Based, and Embedding-Based Adaptations1 Oct 2026
- 2026Beyond the Shadows of Plato's Cave: Evaluating False Memory in Autonomous Agents via Counterfactual Reasoning30 Sep 2026
- 2026GeoSkill:Experience-Driven Hierarchical Skill Learning with Collaborative Revision forGeospatialAgents12 Sep 2026
- 2026ERRAND: Budgeted Maintenance of Agent Memory2 Sep 2026
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experience17 Aug 2026
- 2026SKILLER: Language-Level Reinforcement Learning for Reusable Skill Extraction in Small Language Models11 Aug 2026
- 2026Continual Learning in Transition6 Aug 2026
- 2026Metis: Bridging Text and Code Memory for Self-Evolving Agents23 Jun 2026
- 2026User as Code: Executable Memory for Personalized Agents15 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillPyramid: A Hierarchical Skill Consolidation Framework for Self-Evolving Agents2 Jun 2026
- 2026R^2-Mem: Reflective Experience for Memory Search13 May 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnesses26 Mar 2026
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