mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SkillForge: Forging Domain-Specific, Self-Evolving Agent Skills in Cloud Technical Support

arXiv 2604.08618 ↗First posted 9 Apr 2026cs.IR cs.AI cs.SEcited by 43

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.

Builds on

20 of 39 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks13 Feb

Other references · 19

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  3. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  4. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  5. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  6. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  7. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  8. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  9. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  10. 2022Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineerscited by 1,020
  11. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 814
  12. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 803
7 more
  1. 2026MemSkill: Learning and Evolving Memory Skills for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 129
  2. 2024Symbolic Learning Enables Self-Evolving Agentscited by 104
  3. 2023Automatic Root Cause Analysis via Large Language Models for Cloud Incidentscited by 82
  4. 2023RCAgent: Cloud Root Cause Analysis by Autonomous Agents with Tool-Augmented Large Language Modelscited by 62
  5. 2023D-Bot: Database Diagnosis System using Large Language Modelscited by 28
  6. 2024A Survey of AIOps for Failure Management in the Era of Large Language Modelscited by 16
  7. 2025Agent-in-the-Loop: A Data Flywheel for Continuous Improvement in LLM-based Customer Supportcited by 10

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 43.

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  1. 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 122
  2. 2026From Failed Trajectories to Reliable LLM Agents: Diagnosing and Repairing Harness Flawscited by 21
  3. 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
  4. 2026SkillOpt-Lite: Better and Faster Agent Self-evolution via One Line of Vibecited by 18
  5. 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolutioncited by 12
  6. 2026SkillAudit: Ground-Truth-Free Skill Evolution via Paired Trajectory Auditingcited by 11
  7. 2026SkillAdaptor: Self-Adapting Skills for LLM Agents from Trajectoriescited by 10
  8. 2026SkillHone: A Harness for Continual Agent Skill Evolution Through Persistent Decision Historycited by 6
  9. 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarkscited by 6
  10. 2026Dynamic Agent Skills: A Lifecycle Survey and Taxonomy of Evolving Skill Librariescited by 6
  11. 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generationcited by 5
  12. 2026SkillSmith: Co-Evolving Skills and Tools for Self-Improving Agent Systemscited by 4
31 more
  1. 2026Skill Drift Is Contract Violation: Proactive Maintenance for LLM Agent Skill Librariescited by 3
  2. 2026Ratchet: How Reliable Must an LLM Judge Be to Retire a Skill?cited by 3
  3. 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysiscited by 2
  4. 2026SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agentscited by 1
  5. 2026Rethinking Self-Evolution: A Constrained Exploration-Exploitation Process for Mitigating Skill Overfittingcited by 1
  6. 2026SPEAR: Code-Augmented Agentic Prompt Optimizationcited by 0
  7. 2026ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversationscited by 0
  8. 2026You Live More Than Once: Towards Hierarchical Skill Meta-Evolvingcited by 0
  9. 2026Workflow-to-Skill: Skill Creation via Routing-Workflow-Semantics-Attachments Decompositioncited by 0
  10. 2026SkillChain: Closing the Loop on Skill Evolution for Image-Based E-Commerce AI Assistantscited by 0
  11. 2026IDP AutoOpt: Agent-Driven Optimization of Document Processing Pipeline Configurationscited by 0
  12. 2026Self-Supervised Skill Optimizationcited by 0
  13. 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
  14. 2026Query-Only Backdoor Attacks on Self-Evolving Skills via Trajectory Poisoningcited by 0
  15. 2026Do Personalized Skills Help Coding Agents? An Empirical Study of Developer Interaction Historiescited by 0
  16. 2026Better, Faster, Stronger: Programmatic Skill Learning Best Reduces Agent Costcited by 0
  17. 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedbackcited by 0
  18. 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
  19. 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Securitycited by 0
  20. 2026DMRL: Document-Mediated Reinforcement Learning for Skill Optimization in Advertising Recommendationcited by 0
  21. 2026SkillLift: Learning Dense Rubrics from Sparse Oracles for Efficient Skill Evolutioncited by 0
  22. 2026RESKILL: Explicit Failure Attribution and Structured Repair for Interactive Language Agentscited by 0
  23. 2026FINSKILLOPS: A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent System for SEC Filing QAcited by 0
  24. 2026GraphSkillEvo: Evolutionary Optimization of Graph-Structured Agent Skillscited by 0
  25. 2026A Wrong Turn Does Not Ruin the Journey: Deviation-Guided Skill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 0
  26. 2026Analyzing and Mitigating Cost-Inefficient Behaviors in Coding Agentscited by 0
  27. 2026SkillDRE: Dual-Stage Red-Team Evolution of Agent Skills via Pre-Execution and Runtime Feedbackcited by 0
  28. 2026Certified Long-Horizon Code Agent Evolution via Validation-Gated Skill Optimizationcited by 0
  29. 2026SkillFocus: Evolving Agent Skills via Capability Decompositioncited by 0
  30. 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memorycited by 0
  31. 2026SkillEvoLean: Mutation-enhanced skill evolution for Lean proverscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SkillSmith: Enhancing Locally Deployed Agents via Automatic Skill Construction and Evolution
  2. 2026Agent Skills Can Be Harmful: An Empirical Study of Skill-Induced Failures in LLM Agents
  3. 2026SkillCoach: Self-Evolving Rubrics for Evaluating and Enhancing Agentic Skill-Use
  4. 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revision
  5. 2026SkillSentry: Reliable Skill Execution for LLM Agents via Runtime Assurance
  6. 2026SkillHEX: Improving Agent Skills via Hypothesis-Driven Autonomous Exploration and Exploitation
  7. 2026SKILLFOUNDRY: Building Self-Evolving Agent Skill Libraries from Heterogeneous Scientific Resources
  8. 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agents