SkillForge: Forging Domain-Specific, Self-Evolving Agent Skills in Cloud Technical Support
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution
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Abstract (arXiv)
Deploying LLM-powered agents in enterprise scenarios such as cloud technical support demands high-quality, domain-specific skills. However, existing skill creators lack domain grounding, producing skills poorly aligned with real-world task requirements. Moreover, once deployed, there is no systematic mechanism to trace execution failures back to skill deficiencies and drive targeted refinements, leaving skill quality stagnant despite accumulating operational evidence. We introduce SkillForge, a self-evolving framework that closes an end-to-end creation-evaluation-refinement loop. To produce well-aligned initial skills, a Domain-Contextualized Skill Creator grounds skill synthesis in knowledge bases and historical support tickets. To enable continuous self-optimization, a three-stage pipeline -- Failure Analyzer, Skill Diagnostician, and Skill Optimizer -- automatically diagnoses execution failures in batch, pinpoints the underlying skill deficiencies, and rewrites the skill to eliminate them. This cycle runs iteratively, allowing skills to self-improve with every round of deployment feedback. Evaluated on five real-world cloud support scenarios spanning 1,883 tickets and 3,737 tasks, experiments show that: (1) the Domain-Contextualized Skill Creator produces substantially better initial skills than the generic skill creator, as measured by consistency with expert-authored reference responses from historical tickets; and (2) the self-evolution loop progressively improves skill quality from diverse starting points (including expert-authored, domain-created, and generic skills) across successive rounds, demonstrating that automated evolution can surpass manually curated expert knowledge.
Key facts. Cited by 43 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 20 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2026.
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Other references · 19
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 43.
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- 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 122
- 2026From Failed Trajectories to Reliable LLM Agents: Diagnosing and Repairing Harness Flawscited by 21
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026SkillOpt-Lite: Better and Faster Agent Self-evolution via One Line of Vibecited by 18
- 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolutioncited by 12
- 2026SkillAudit: Ground-Truth-Free Skill Evolution via Paired Trajectory Auditingcited by 11
- 2026SkillAdaptor: Self-Adapting Skills for LLM Agents from Trajectoriescited by 10
- 2026SkillHone: A Harness for Continual Agent Skill Evolution Through Persistent Decision Historycited by 6
- 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarkscited by 6
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
- 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generationcited by 5
- 2026SkillSmith: Co-Evolving Skills and Tools for Self-Improving Agent Systemscited by 4
31 more
- 2026Skill Drift Is Contract Violation: Proactive Maintenance for LLM Agent Skill Librariescited by 3
- 2026Ratchet: How Reliable Must an LLM Judge Be to Retire a Skill?cited by 3
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysiscited by 2
- 2026SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026Rethinking Self-Evolution: A Constrained Exploration-Exploitation Process for Mitigating Skill Overfittingcited by 1
- 2026SPEAR: Code-Augmented Agentic Prompt Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversationscited by 0
- 2026You Live More Than Once: Towards Hierarchical Skill Meta-Evolvingcited by 0
- 2026Workflow-to-Skill: Skill Creation via Routing-Workflow-Semantics-Attachments Decompositioncited by 0
- 2026SkillChain: Closing the Loop on Skill Evolution for Image-Based E-Commerce AI Assistantscited by 0
- 2026IDP AutoOpt: Agent-Driven Optimization of Document Processing Pipeline Configurationscited by 0
- 2026Self-Supervised Skill Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
- 2026Query-Only Backdoor Attacks on Self-Evolving Skills via Trajectory Poisoningcited by 0
- 2026Do Personalized Skills Help Coding Agents? An Empirical Study of Developer Interaction Historiescited by 0
- 2026Better, Faster, Stronger: Programmatic Skill Learning Best Reduces Agent Costcited by 0
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Securitycited by 0
- 2026DMRL: Document-Mediated Reinforcement Learning for Skill Optimization in Advertising Recommendationcited by 0
- 2026SkillLift: Learning Dense Rubrics from Sparse Oracles for Efficient Skill Evolutioncited by 0
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agentscited by 0
- 2026FINSKILLOPS: A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent System for SEC Filing QAcited by 0
- 2026GraphSkillEvo: Evolutionary Optimization of Graph-Structured Agent Skillscited by 0
- 2026A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026Analyzing and Mitigating Cost-Inefficient Behaviors in Coding Agentscited by 0
- 2026SkillDRE: Dual-Stage Red-Team Evolution of Agent Skills via Pre-Execution and Runtime Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026Certified Long-Horizon Code Agent Evolution via Validation-Gated Skill Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026SkillFocus: Evolving Agent Skills via Capability Decompositioncited by 0
- 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memorycited by 0
- 2026SkillEvoLean: Mutation-enhanced skill evolution for Lean proverscited by 0
- 2026SkillEvoLean: Mutation-enhanced skill evolution for Lean provers1 Oct 2026
- 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memory29 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillFocus: Evolving Agent Skills via Capability Decomposition28 Sep 2026
- 2026Certified Long-Horizon Code Agent Evolution via Validation-Gated Skill Optimization26 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillDRE: Dual-Stage Red-Team Evolution of Agent Skills via Pre-Execution and Runtime Feedback26 Sep 2026
- 2026Analyzing and Mitigating Cost-Inefficient Behaviors in Coding Agents25 Sep 2026
- 2026A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents24 Sep 2026
- 2026GraphSkillEvo: Evolutionary Optimization of Graph-Structured Agent Skills18 Sep 2026
- 2026FINSKILLOPS: A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent System for SEC Filing QA17 Sep 2026
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agents14 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillLift: Learning Dense Rubrics from Sparse Oracles for Efficient Skill Evolution14 Sep 2026
- 2026DMRL: Document-Mediated Reinforcement Learning for Skill Optimization in Advertising Recommendation2 Sep 2026
31 more
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experience17 Aug 2026
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedback13 Aug 2026
- 2026Better, Faster, Stronger: Programmatic Skill Learning Best Reduces Agent Cost11 Aug 2026
- 2026Do Personalized Skills Help Coding Agents? An Empirical Study of Developer Interaction Histories10 Aug 2026
- 2026Query-Only Backdoor Attacks on Self-Evolving Skills via Trajectory Poisoning8 Aug 2026
- 2026Continual Learning in Transition6 Aug 2026
- 2026Self-Supervised Skill Optimization30 Jul 2026
- 2026Rethinking Self-Evolution: A Constrained Exploration-Exploitation Process for Mitigating Skill Overfitting29 Jul 2026
- 2026IDP AutoOpt: Agent-Driven Optimization of Document Processing Pipeline Configurations13 Jul 2026
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Libraries11 Jul 2026
- 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution6 Jul 2026
- 2026SkillOpt-Lite: Better and Faster Agent Self-evolution via One Line of Vibe3 Jul 2026
- 2026SkillAudit: Ground-Truth-Free Skill Evolution via Paired Trajectory Auditing12 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillChain: Closing the Loop on Skill Evolution for Image-Based E-Commerce AI Assistants11 Jun 2026
- 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarks9 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillHone: A Harness for Continual Agent Skill Evolution Through Persistent Decision History7 Jun 2026
- 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generation6 Jun 2026
- 2026Workflow-to-Skill: Skill Creation via Routing-Workflow-Semantics-Attachments Decomposition5 Jun 2026
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysis4 Jun 2026
- 2026From Failed Trajectories to Reliable LLM Agents: Diagnosing and Repairing Harness Flaws4 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillSmith: Co-Evolving Skills and Tools for Self-Improving Agent Systems31 May 2026
- 2026SkillAdaptor: Self-Adapting Skills for LLM Agents from Trajectories31 May 2026
- 2026SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agents28 May 2026
- 2026You Live More Than Once: Towards Hierarchical Skill Meta-Evolving27 May 2026
- 2026ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversations27 May 2026
- 2026SPEAR: Code-Augmented Agentic Prompt Optimization25 May 2026
- 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skills22 May 2026
- 2026Ratchet: How Reliable Must an LLM Judge Be to Retire a Skill?21 May 2026
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolution18 May 2026
- 2026Skill Drift Is Contract Violation: Proactive Maintenance for LLM Agent Skill Libraries9 May 2026
- 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 122
- 2026From Failed Trajectories to Reliable LLM Agents: Diagnosing and Repairing Harness Flawscited by 21
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026SkillOpt-Lite: Better and Faster Agent Self-evolution via One Line of Vibecited by 18
- 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolutioncited by 12
- 2026SkillAudit: Ground-Truth-Free Skill Evolution via Paired Trajectory Auditingcited by 11
- 2026SkillAdaptor: Self-Adapting Skills for LLM Agents from Trajectoriescited by 10
- 2026SkillHone: A Harness for Continual Agent Skill Evolution Through Persistent Decision Historycited by 6
- 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarkscited by 6
- 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
- 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generationcited by 5
- 2026Skill Drift Is Contract Violation: Proactive Maintenance for LLM Agent Skill Librariescited by 3
12 most cited of 29 All 29 (JSON)
- 2026SkillEvoLean: Mutation-enhanced skill evolution for Lean provers1 Oct 2026
- 2026SkillFocus: Evolving Agent Skills via Capability Decomposition28 Sep 2026
- 2026Certified Long-Horizon Code Agent Evolution via Validation-Gated Skill Optimization26 Sep 2026
- 2026Analyzing and Mitigating Cost-Inefficient Behaviors in Coding Agents25 Sep 2026
- 2026A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agents24 Sep 2026
- 2026GraphSkillEvo: Evolutionary Optimization of Graph-Structured Agent Skills18 Sep 2026
- 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agents14 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillLift: Learning Dense Rubrics from Sparse Oracles for Efficient Skill Evolution14 Sep 2026
- 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Security30 Aug 2026
- 2026Better, Faster, Stronger: Programmatic Skill Learning Best Reduces Agent Cost11 Aug 2026
- 2026Do Personalized Skills Help Coding Agents? An Empirical Study of Developer Interaction Histories10 Aug 2026
- 2026Query-Only Backdoor Attacks on Self-Evolving Skills via Trajectory Poisoning8 Aug 2026
12 newest of 29 All 29 (JSON)
- 2026Ratchet: How Reliable Must an LLM Judge Be to Retire a Skill?cited by 3
- 2026ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversationscited by 0
- 2026SkillChain: Closing the Loop on Skill Evolution for Image-Based E-Commerce AI Assistantscited by 0
- 2026Self-Supervised Skill Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
- 2026DMRL: Document-Mediated Reinforcement Learning for Skill Optimization in Advertising Recommendationcited by 0
- 2026FINSKILLOPS: A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent System for SEC Filing QAcited by 0
- 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memorycited by 0
- 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memory29 Sep 2026
- 2026FINSKILLOPS: A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent System for SEC Filing QA17 Sep 2026
- 2026DMRL: Document-Mediated Reinforcement Learning for Skill Optimization in Advertising Recommendation2 Sep 2026
- 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experience17 Aug 2026
- 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedback13 Aug 2026
- 2026Continual Learning in Transition6 Aug 2026
- 2026Self-Supervised Skill Optimization30 Jul 2026
- 2026SkillChain: Closing the Loop on Skill Evolution for Image-Based E-Commerce AI Assistants11 Jun 2026
- 2026ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversations27 May 2026
- 2026Ratchet: How Reliable Must an LLM Judge Be to Retire a Skill?21 May 2026
Similar, not cited
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