# TreeCUA: Efficiently Scaling GUI Automation with Tree-Structured Verifiable Evolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09662 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09662/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 25 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [GUI and mobile agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/gui-and-mobile-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06070/) (2023)
- [OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07972/) (2024)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10935/) (2024)
- [OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23218/) (2024)
- [Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10088/) (2023)
- [Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04454/) (2024)
- [OS-Copilot: Towards Generalist Computer Agents with Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07456/) (2024)
- [Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15144/) (2025)
- [ROSCOE: A Suite of Metrics for Scoring Step-by-Step Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07919/) (2022)
- [OS-Genesis: Automating GUI Agent Trajectory Construction via Reverse Task Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19723/) (2024)
- [AgentTrek: Agent Trajectory Synthesis via Guiding Replay with Web Tutorials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09605/) (2024)
- [WebCanvas: Benchmarking Web Agents in Online Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12373/) (2024)
- [AMEX: Android Multi-annotation Expo Dataset for Mobile GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17490/) (2024)
- [Explorer: Scaling Exploration-driven Web Trajectory Synthesis for Multimodal Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11357/) (2025)
- [ScaleCUA: Scaling Open-Source Computer Use Agents with Cross-Platform Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15221/) (2025)
- [UltraCUA: A Foundation Model for Computer Use Agents with Hybrid Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17790/) (2025)
- [UItron: Foundational GUI Agent with Advanced Perception and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21767/) (2025)
- [Grounding Computer Use Agents on Human Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07332/) (2025)
- [ScaleTrack: Scaling and back-tracking Automated GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00416/) (2025)
- [OmniActor: A Generalist GUI and Embodied Agent for 2D&3D Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02322/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [OpenMobile: Building Open Mobile Agents with Task and Trajectory Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15093/) (2026)
- [MaskClaw: Edge-Side Personalized Privacy Arbitration for GUI Agents with Behavior-Driven Skill Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28646/) (2026)
- [Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07110/) (2026)
- [AutoGUIWorld: Image Generators as Visual World Models for GUI Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01215/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Effectively scaling GUI automation is essential for computer-use agents (CUAs); however, existing work primarily focuses on scaling GUI grounding rather than the more crucial GUI planning, which requires more sophisticated data collection. In reality, the exploration process of a CUA across apps/desktops/web pages typically follows a tree structure, with earlier functional entry points often being explored more frequently. Thus, organizing large-scale trajectories into tree structures can reduce data cost and streamline the data scaling of GUI planning. In this work, we propose TreeCUA to efficiently scale GUI automation with tree-structured verifiable evolution. We propose a multi-agent collaborative framework to explore the environment, verify actions, summarize trajectories, and evaluate quality to generate high-quality and scalable GUI trajectories. To improve efficiency, we devise a novel tree-based topology to store and replay duplicate exploration nodes, and design an adaptive exploration algorithm to balance the depth (i.e., trajectory difficulty) and breadth (i.e., trajectory diversity). Moreover, we develop world knowledge guidance and global memory backtracking to avoid low-quality generation. Finally, we naturally extend and propose the TreeCUA-DPO method from abundant tree node information, improving GUI planning capability by referring to the branch information of adjacent trajectories. Experimental results show that TreeCUA and TreeCUA-DPO offer significant improvements, and out-of-domain (OOD) studies further demonstrate strong generalization. All trajectory node information and code will be available at https://github.com/UITron-hub/TreeCUA.