AgentArk: Distilling Multi-Agent Intelligence into a Single LLM Agent
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
While large language model (LLM) multi-agent systems achieve superior reasoning performance through iterative debate, practical deployment is limited by their high computational cost and error propagation. This paper proposes AgentArk, a novel framework to distill multi-agent dynamics into the weights of a single model, effectively transforming explicit test-time interactions into implicit model capabilities. This equips a single agent with the intelligence of multi-agent systems while remaining computationally efficient. Specifically, we investigate three hierarchical distillation strategies across various models, tasks, scaling, and scenarios: reasoning-enhanced fine-tuning; trajectory-based augmentation; and process-aware distillation. By shifting the burden of computation from inference to training, the distilled models preserve the efficiency of one agent while exhibiting strong reasoning and self-correction performance of multiple agents. They further demonstrate enhanced robustness and generalization across diverse reasoning tasks. We hope this work can shed light on future research on efficient and robust multi-agent development. Our code is at https://github.com/AIFrontierLab/AgentArk.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 62 of its 77 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2026.
Builds on
62 of 77 references.
Closest ancestors · 15
Same direction, newest first
- 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agents18 Jan
- 2025Towards a Science of Scaling Agent Systems9 Dec
- 2025Adaptive Coopetition: Leveraging Coarse Verifier Signals for Resilient Multi-Agent LLM Reasoning21 Oct
- 2025MARS: toward more efficient multi-agent collaboration for LLM reasoning24 Sep
- 2025Chain-of-Agents: End-to-End Agent Foundation Models via Multi-Agent Distillation and Agentic RL6 Aug
- 2025Reinforce LLM Reasoning through Multi-Agent Reflection10 Jun
- 2025The Cost of Dynamic Reasoning: Demystifying AI Agents and Test-Time Scaling from an AI Infrastructure Perspective4 Jun
- 2025Debate, Reflect, and Distill: Multi-Agent Feedback with Tree-Structured Preference Optimization for Efficient Language Model Enhancement4 Jun
- 2025Distilling LLM Agent into Small Models with Retrieval and Code Tools23 May
- 2025Debate Only When Necessary: Adaptive Multiagent Collaboration for Efficient LLM Reasoning7 Apr
- 2025Table-Critic: A Multi-Agent Framework for Collaborative Criticism and Refinement in Table Reasoning17 Feb
- 2024Diversity of Thought Elicits Stronger Reasoning Capabilities in Multi-Agent Debate Frameworks10 Oct
3 more
- 2024MAGDi: Structured Distillation of Multi-Agent Interaction Graphs Improves Reasoning in Smaller Language Models2 Feb
- 2023ReConcile: Round-Table Conference Improves Reasoning via Consensus among Diverse LLMs22 Sep
- 2023Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate30 May
Other references · 47
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
- 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
- 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
- 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,462
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
- 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
- 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,598
- 2021TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoodscited by 2,919
- 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,739
- 2023Math-Shepherd: Verify and Reinforce LLMs Step-by-step without Human Annotationscited by 895
35 more
- 2024Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challengescited by 752
- 2023MetaMath: Bootstrap Your Own Mathematical Questions for Large Language Modelscited by 724
- 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agentscited by 622
- 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 580
- 2022MedMCQA : A Large-scale Multi-Subject Multi-Choice Dataset for Medical domain Question Answeringcited by 525
- 2021A Dataset of Information-Seeking Questions and Answers Anchored in Research Paperscited by 475
- 2026Self-Distilled Reasoner: On-Policy Self-Distillation for Large Language Modelscited by 386
- 2021QMSum: A New Benchmark for Query-based Multi-domain Meeting Summarizationcited by 363
- 2023Tool Learning with Foundation Modelscited by 302
- 2024LLM Multi-Agent Systems: Challenges and Open Problemscited by 119
- 2025Evaluating Step-by-step Reasoning Traces: A Surveycited by 62
- 2025A Survey on Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoningcited by 52
- 2023Multi-Agent Consensus Seeking via Large Language Modelscited by 50
- 2024Optima: Optimizing Effectiveness and Efficiency for LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systemcited by 40
- 2026When Single-Agent with Skills Replace Multi-Agent Systems and When They Failcited by 34
- 2026MAS-Orchestra: Understanding and Improving Multi-Agent Reasoning Through Holistic Orchestration and Controlled Benchmarkscited by 26
- 2025AnyMAC: Cascading Flexible Multi-Agent Collaboration via Next-Agent Predictioncited by 25
- 2025Creativity in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems: A Surveycited by 23
- 2025Premise-Augmented Reasoning Chains Improve Error Identification in Math reasoning with LLMscited by 22
- 2024Do We Really Need a Complex Agent System? Distill Embodied Agent into a Single Modelcited by 19
- 2024Training Language Models to Critique With Multi-agent Feedbackcited by 16
- 2024AEGIS: An Agent-based Framework for General Bug Reproduction from Issue Descriptionscited by 15
- 2024Language-Driven Policy Distillation for Cooperative Driving in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
- 2025Structured Agent Distillation for Large Language Modelcited by 11
- 2025MAMM-Refine: A Recipe for Improving Faithfulness in Generation with Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 9
- 2025Beyond Magic Words: Sharpness-Aware Prompt Evolving for Robust Large Language Models with TAREcited by 9
- 2025Comprehensive Vulnerability Analysis is Necessary for Trustworthy LLM-MAScited by 8
- 2025Rethinking Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Videoscited by 8
- 2026MASCOT: Multi-Agent Socio-Collaborative Companion Systemscited by 7
- 2025Beyond Correctness: Exposing LLM-generated Logical Flaws in Reasoning via Multi-step Automated Theorem Provingcited by 6
- 2026MAESTRO: Multi-Agent Evaluation Suite for Testing, Reliability, and Observabilitycited by 6
- 2025Assessing LLM Reasoning Steps via Principal Knowledge Groundingcited by 3
- 2026Learning Latency-Aware Orchestration for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 3
- 2025The Social Cost of Intelligence: Emergence, Propagation, and Amplification of Stereotypical Bias in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 2
- 2025Knowledge Graph-Guided Multi-Agent Distillation for Reliable Industrial Question Answering with Datasetscited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.
12 papers.
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- 2026UniSD: Towards a Unified Self-Distillation Framework for Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2026Large Language Model Post-Training: A Unified View of Off-Policy and On-Policy Learningcited by 5
- 2026Latent Agents: A Post-Training Procedure for Internalized Multi-Agent Debatecited by 3
- 2026FlowBank: Query-Adaptive Agentic Workflows Optimization through Precompute-and-Reusecited by 2
- 2026EGTR-Review: Efficient Evidence-Grounded Scientific Peer Review Generation via Multi-Agent Teacher Distillationcited by 1
- 2026Teacher Supervision over Representation Equivalence Classescited by 0
- 2026PROOF-Gen: From Optimized Data to Better Distillationcited by 0
- 2026From Collaboration to Capability: Internalizing Routed LLM Experts into Compact Reasonerscited by 0
- 2026Black-Box Auditing of Epistemic Reliability in Multi-Agent Debate Distillationcited by 0
- 2026Waggle: Learning One Anonymous Local Law for Self-Organizing LLM Swarmscited by 0
- 2026Waggle: Learning One Anonymous Local Law for Self-Organizing LLM Swarms28 Sep 2026
- 2026Black-Box Auditing of Epistemic Reliability in Multi-Agent Debate Distillation26 Sep 2026
- 2026From Collaboration to Capability: Internalizing Routed LLM Experts into Compact Reasoners11 Sep 2026
- 2026PROOF-Gen: From Optimized Data to Better Distillation24 Aug 2026
- 2026Teacher Supervision over Representation Equivalence Classes3 Jul 2026
- 2026FlowBank: Query-Adaptive Agentic Workflows Optimization through Precompute-and-Reuse9 Jun 2026
- 2026EGTR-Review: Efficient Evidence-Grounded Scientific Peer Review Generation via Multi-Agent Teacher Distillation4 Jun 2026
- 2026UniSD: Towards a Unified Self-Distillation Framework for Large Language Models7 May 2026
- 2026Latent Agents: A Post-Training Procedure for Internalized Multi-Agent Debate27 Apr 2026
- 2026Large Language Model Post-Training: A Unified View of Off-Policy and On-Policy Learning9 Apr 2026
- 2026From Multi-Agent to Single-Agent: When Is Skill Distillation Beneficial?2 Apr 2026
- 2026ARLArena: A Unified Framework for Stable Agentic Reinforcement Learning25 Feb 2026
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