SkillCraft: Can LLM Agents Learn to Use Tools Skillfully?
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution
Abstract (arXiv)
Real-world tool-using agents operate over long-horizon workflows with recurring structure and diverse demands, where effective behavior requires not only invoking atomic tools but also abstracting, and reusing higher-level tool compositions. However, existing benchmarks mainly measure instance-level success under static tool sets, offering limited insight into agents' ability to acquire such reusable skills. We address this gap by introducing SkillCraft, a benchmark explicitly stress-test agent ability to form and reuse higher-level tool compositions, where we call Skills. SkillCraft features realistic, highly compositional tool-use scenarios with difficulty scaled along both quantitative and structural dimensions, designed to elicit skill abstraction and cross-task reuse. We further propose a lightweight evaluation protocol that enables agents to auto-compose atomic tools into executable Skills, cache and reuse them inside and across tasks, thereby improving efficiency while accumulating a persistent library of reusable skills. Evaluating state-of-the-art agents on SkillCraft, we observe substantial efficiency gains, with token usage reduced by up to 80% by skill saving and reuse. Moreover, success rate strongly correlates with tool composition ability at test time, underscoring compositional skill acquisition as a core capability.
Key facts. Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 25 of its 36 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2026.
Builds on
25 of 36 references.
References · 25
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
- 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
- 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
- 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,402
- 2023AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agentscited by 1,267
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,195
- 2023GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistantscited by 1,128
- 2025DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Modelscited by 815
- 2025BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agentscited by 647
- 2025Kimi K2: Open Agentic Intelligencecited by 567
- 2024Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agentscited by 564
- 2024AppWorld: A Controllable World of Apps and People for Benchmarking Interactive Coding Agentscited by 401
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- 2024TheAgentCompany: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Consequential Real World Taskscited by 326
- 2023Ghost in the Minecraft: Generally Capable Agents for Open-World Environments via Large Language Models with Text-based Knowledge and Memorycited by 289
- 2023CREATOR: Tool Creation for Disentangling Abstract and Concrete Reasoning of Large Language Modelscited by 93
- 2025The Tool Decathlon: Benchmarking Language Agents for Diverse, Realistic, and Long-Horizon Task Executioncited by 85
- 2025SWE-bench Goes Live!cited by 80
- 2025ACEBench: Who Wins the Match Point in Tool Usage?cited by 71
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- 2025MCPEval: Automatic MCP-based Deep Evaluation for AI Agent Modelscited by 36
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- 2025ARE: Scaling Up Agent Environments and Evaluationscited by 30
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 30.
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- 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verificationcited by 128
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnessescited by 61
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revisioncited by 30
- 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agentscited by 25
- 2026From Raw Experience to Skill Consumption: A Systematic Study of Model-Generated Agent Skillscited by 22
- 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applicationscited by 18
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026Skill-R1: Agent Skill Evolution via Reinforcement Learningcited by 15
- 2026SkillAxe: Sharpening LLM-Authored Agent Skills Through Evaluation-Guided Self-Refinementcited by 12
- 2026WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolutioncited by 12
- 2026SkillGraph: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration with Multimodal Graph Topologycited by 9
- 2026SkillCAT: Contrastive, Assessment-Augmented and Topology-AwareSkill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 7
18 more
- 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AIcited by 6
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
- 2026SkillEvolBench: Benchmarking the Evolution from Episodic Experience to Procedural Skillscited by 5
- 2026TraceCompiler: Skill-Guided Mining and Compilation of LLM Agent Traces into Mostly Deterministic Workflowscited by 5
- 2026RedAct: Redacting Agent Capability Traces for Procedural Skill Protectioncited by 3
- 2026Tools as Continuous Flow for Evolving Agentic Reasoningcited by 2
- 2026Skill or Skip? Learning Selective Skill Invocation in Agentic Tasks via Dual-Granularity Preference Learningcited by 2
- 2026OpenClaw-Skill: Collective Skill Tree Search for Agentic Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
- 2026Evidence Over Plans: Online Trajectory Verification for Skill Distillationcited by 1
- 2026SetupX: Can LLM Agents Learn from Past Failures in Functionality-Correct Code Repository Setup?cited by 1
- 2026PYTHALAB-MERA: Validation-Grounded Memory, Retrieval, and Acceptance Control for Frozen-LLM Coding Agentscited by 0
- 2026Toward Skill-Native LLMs: Skill Entropy for Benchmarking and Training Long-Horizon Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Natural-Language Workflows Are Not Software Yet: Artifact-Driven Compilation for Reliable Agent Executioncited by 0
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Securitycited by 0
- 2026Subagents vs Agent Skills: Executing Reusable Knowledge for Long-Horizon Agentic Taskscited by 0
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agentscited by 0
- 2026EVISKILL: Grounding Skill Evolution in Replayable Evidencecited by 0
- 2026EVISKILL: Grounding Skill Evolution in Replayable Evidence4 Oct 2026
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agents14 Sep 2026
- 2026Subagents vs Agent Skills: Executing Reusable Knowledge for Long-Horizon Agentic Tasks7 Sep 2026
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolution27 Aug 2026
- 2026Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agents23 Aug 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Workflows Are Not Software Yet: Artifact-Driven Compilation for Reliable Agent Execution21 Aug 2026
- 2026Toward Skill-Native LLMs: Skill Entropy for Benchmarking and Training Long-Horizon Reasoning5 Aug 2026
- 2026TraceCompiler: Skill-Guided Mining and Compilation of LLM Agent Traces into Mostly Deterministic Workflows3 Aug 2026
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Libraries11 Jul 2026
- 2026OpenClaw-Skill: Collective Skill Tree Search for Agentic Large Language Models15 Jun 2026
- 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AI12 Jun 2026
18 more
- 2026SkillCAT: Contrastive, Assessment-Augmented and Topology-AwareSkill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents11 Jun 2026
- 2026RedAct: Redacting Agent Capability Traces for Procedural Skill Protection9 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillAxe: Sharpening LLM-Authored Agent Skills Through Evaluation-Guided Self-Refinement9 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
- 2026SetupX: Can LLM Agents Learn from Past Failures in Functionality-Correct Code Repository Setup?25 May 2026
- 2026SkillEvolBench: Benchmarking the Evolution from Episodic Experience to Procedural Skills22 May 2026
- 2026From Raw Experience to Skill Consumption: A Systematic Study of Model-Generated Agent Skills22 May 2026
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolution18 May 2026
- 2026Skill-R1: Agent Skill Evolution via Reinforcement Learning10 May 2026
- 2026Evidence Over Plans: Online Trajectory Verification for Skill Distillation9 May 2026
- 2026PYTHALAB-MERA: Validation-Grounded Memory, Retrieval, and Acceptance Control for Frozen-LLM Coding Agents8 May 2026
- 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications8 May 2026
- 2026Tools as Continuous Flow for Evolving Agentic Reasoning8 May 2026
- 2026SkillGraph: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration with Multimodal Graph Topology19 Apr 2026
- 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agents19 Apr 2026
- 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verification2 Apr 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnesses26 Mar 2026
- 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verificationcited by 128
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revisioncited by 30
- 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applicationscited by 18
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026Skill-R1: Agent Skill Evolution via Reinforcement Learningcited by 15
- 2026SkillAxe: Sharpening LLM-Authored Agent Skills Through Evaluation-Guided Self-Refinementcited by 12
- 2026SkillCAT: Contrastive, Assessment-Augmented and Topology-AwareSkill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 7
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
- 2026TraceCompiler: Skill-Guided Mining and Compilation of LLM Agent Traces into Mostly Deterministic Workflowscited by 5
- 2026Skill or Skip? Learning Selective Skill Invocation in Agentic Tasks via Dual-Granularity Preference Learningcited by 2
- 2026OpenClaw-Skill: Collective Skill Tree Search for Agentic Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 2
12 most cited of 19 All 19 (JSON)
- 2026EVISKILL: Grounding Skill Evolution in Replayable Evidence4 Oct 2026
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agents14 Sep 2026
- 2026Subagents vs Agent Skills: Executing Reusable Knowledge for Long-Horizon Agentic Tasks7 Sep 2026
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agents23 Aug 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Workflows Are Not Software Yet: Artifact-Driven Compilation for Reliable Agent Execution21 Aug 2026
- 2026TraceCompiler: Skill-Guided Mining and Compilation of LLM Agent Traces into Mostly Deterministic Workflows3 Aug 2026
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Libraries11 Jul 2026
- 2026OpenClaw-Skill: Collective Skill Tree Search for Agentic Large Language Models15 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillCAT: Contrastive, Assessment-Augmented and Topology-AwareSkill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents11 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillAxe: Sharpening LLM-Authored Agent Skills Through Evaluation-Guided Self-Refinement9 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revision31 May 2026
12 newest of 19 All 19 (JSON)
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnessescited by 61
- 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agentscited by 25
- 2026From Raw Experience to Skill Consumption: A Systematic Study of Model-Generated Agent Skillscited by 22
- 2026WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolutioncited by 12
- 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AIcited by 6
- 2026SkillEvolBench: Benchmarking the Evolution from Episodic Experience to Procedural Skillscited by 5
- 2026Evidence Over Plans: Online Trajectory Verification for Skill Distillationcited by 1
- 2026WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolution27 Aug 2026
- 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AI12 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillEvolBench: Benchmarking the Evolution from Episodic Experience to Procedural Skills22 May 2026
- 2026From Raw Experience to Skill Consumption: A Systematic Study of Model-Generated Agent Skills22 May 2026
- 2026Evidence Over Plans: Online Trajectory Verification for Skill Distillation9 May 2026
- 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agents19 Apr 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnesses26 Mar 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026MUSE-Autoskill: Self-Evolving Agents via Skill Creation, Memory, Management, and Evaluation
- 2026GraSP: Graph-Structured Skill Compositions for LLM Agents
- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settings
- 2026SkillRouter: Skill Routing for LLM Agents at Scale
- 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agents
- 2026SkillCorpus: Consolidating and Evaluating the Open Skill Ecosystem for Real-World LLM Agents
- 2026A Framework for Evaluating Agentic Skills at Scale
- 2026SkillGenBench: Benchmarking Skill Generation Pipelines for LLM Agents