mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Controllable and Verifiable Tool-Use Data Synthesis for Agentic Reinforcement Learning

arXiv 2604.09813 ↗First posted 10 Apr 2026cs.AIcited by 5

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Reinforcement learning for LLM agents

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Existing synthetic tool-use corpora are primarily designed for offline supervised fine-tuning, yet reinforcement learning (RL) requires executable environments that support reward-checkable online rollouts. We propose COVERT, a two-stage pipeline that first generates reliable base tool-use trajectories through self-evolving synthesis with multi-level validation, and then applies oracle-preserving augmentations that systematically increase environmental complexity. These augmentations introduce distractor tools, indirect or ambiguous user queries, and noisy, multi-format, or erroneous tool outputs, while strictly preserving oracle tool calls and final answers as ground truth. This design enables automatic reward computation via reference matching for standard cases and lightweight judge-assisted verification for special behaviors such as error detection, supporting RL optimization of tool-calling policies. On Qwen2.5-Instruct-14B, COVERT-RL improves overall accuracy on BFCL v3 from 56.5 to 59.9 and on ACEBench from 53.0 to 59.3, with minimal regressions on general-ability benchmarks; when stacked on SFT, it further reaches 62.1 and 61.8, confirming additive gains. These results suggest that oracle-preserving synthetic environments offer a practical RL refinement stage, complementary to SFT, for improving tool-use robustness under ambiguity and unreliable tool feedback.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for LLM agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 35 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2026.

Builds on

35 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Tool Zero: Training Tool-Augmented LLMs via Pure RL from Scratch2 Nov
  2. 2025Nemotron-Research-Tool-N1: Exploring Tool-Using Language Models with Reinforced Reasoning25 Apr
  3. 2025ToolRL: Reward is All Tool Learning Needs16 Apr
  4. 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMs15 Apr
  5. 2025ToRL: Scaling Tool-Integrated RL30 Mar

Other references · 30

  1. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  4. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,713
  5. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 3,634
  6. 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,748
  7. 2022Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructionscited by 2,674
  8. 2020Learning to summarize from human feedbackcited by 2,562
  9. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 1,906
  10. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  11. 2024MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,758
  12. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
18 more
  1. 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIscited by 1,302
  2. 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,143
  3. 2024DeepSeek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Modelcited by 1,093
  4. 2023ToolAlpaca: Generalized Tool Learning for Language Models with 3000 Simulated Casescited by 383
  5. 2025WebThinker: Empowering Large Reasoning Models with Deep Research Capabilitycited by 320
  6. 2024ToolACE: Winning the Points of LLM Function Callingcited by 204
  7. 2024APIGen: Automated Pipeline for Generating Verifiable and Diverse Function-Calling Datasetscited by 188
  8. 2025APIGen-MT: Agentic Pipeline for Multi-Turn Data Generation via Simulated Agent-Human Interplaycited by 158
  9. 2024RLEF: Grounding Code LLMs in Execution Feedback with Reinforcement Learningcited by 146
  10. 2024xLAM: A Family of Large Action Models to Empower AI Agent Systemscited by 108
  11. 2024Enhancing Code LLMs with Reinforcement Learning in Code Generation: A Surveycited by 82
  12. 2024MARIO: MAth Reasoning with code Interpreter Output -- A Reproducible Pipelinecited by 81
  13. 2024Self-play with Execution Feedback: Improving Instruction-following Capabilities of Large Language Modelscited by 73
  14. 2025Tool-Star: Empowering LLM-Brained Multi-Tool Reasoner via Reinforcement Learningcited by 67
  15. 2025TOUCAN: Synthesizing 1.5M Tool-Agentic Data from Real-World MCP Environmentscited by 61
  16. 2024API-BLEND: A Comprehensive Corpora for Training and Benchmarking API LLMscited by 39
  17. 2024TOOLVERIFIER: Generalization to New Tools via Self-Verificationcited by 23
  18. 2024MAG-V: A Multi-Agent Framework for Synthetic Data Generation and Verificationcited by 12

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.

5 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026CM2: Reinforcement Learning with Checklist Rewards for Multi-Turn and Multi-Step Agentic Tool Use
  2. 2026Synthesize and Reward -- Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Step Tool Use in Live Environments
  3. 2025ToolBrain: A Flexible Reinforcement Learning Framework for Agentic Tools
  4. 2026ToolRLA: Multiplicative Reward Decomposition for Tool-Integrated Agents
  5. 2026From Self-Evolving Synthetic Data to Verifiable-Reward RL: Post-Training Multi-turn Interactive Tool-Using Agents
  6. 2026Tool-Aware Optimization with Entropy Guidance for Efficient Agentic Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2026Learning When Not to Act: Mitigating Tool Abuse in Agentic Reinforcement Learning
  8. 2025VerlTool: Towards Holistic Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Tool Use