mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

SkillOS: Learning Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agents

arXiv 2605.06614 ↗First posted 7 May 2026cs.AI cs.CLcited by 49

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

LLM-based agents are increasingly deployed to handle streaming tasks, yet they often remain one-off problem solvers that fail to learn from past interactions. Reusable skills distilled from experience provide a natural substrate for self-evolution, where high-quality skill curation serves as the key bottleneck. Existing approaches either rely on manual skill curation, prescribe heuristic skill operations, or train for short-horizon skill operations. However, they still struggle to learn complex long-term curation policies from indirect and delayed feedback. To tackle this challenge, we propose SkillOS, an experience-driven RL training recipe for learning skill curation in self-evolving agents. SkillOS pairs a frozen agent executor that retrieves and applies skills with a trainable skill curator that updates an external SkillRepo from accumulated experience. To provide learning signals for curation, we design composite rewards and train on grouped task streams based on skill-relevant task dependencies, where earlier trajectories update the SkillRepo, and later related tasks evaluate these updates. Across multi-turn agentic tasks and single-turn reasoning tasks, SkillOS consistently outperforms memory-free and strong memory-based baselines in both effectiveness and efficiency, with the learned skill curator generalizing across different executor backbones and task domains. Further analyses show that the learned curator produces more targeted skill use, while the skills in SkillRepo evolve into more richly structured Markdown files that encode higher-level meta-skills over time.

Key facts. Cited by 49 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 56 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 May 2026.

Builds on

56 of 63 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Dynamic Dual-Granularity Skill Bank for Agentic RL30 Mar
  2. 2026ARISE: Agent Reasoning with Intrinsic Skill Evolution in Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning17 Mar
  3. 2026EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systems3 Mar
  4. 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks13 Feb
  5. 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learning9 Feb
  6. 2026Agent Skills: A Data-Driven Analysis of Claude Skills for Extending Large Language Model Functionality8 Feb
  7. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Self-Improving Agent with Skill Library18 Dec
  8. 2024Agent Skill Acquisition for Large Language Models via CycleQD16 Oct

Other references · 48

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  3. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
  4. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
  5. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  6. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
  7. 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,879
  8. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
  9. 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
  10. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,251
  11. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,205
  12. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,063
36 more
  1. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 876
  2. 2025Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Trainingcited by 497
  3. 2024Agent Workflow Memorycited by 383
  4. 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agentscited by 303
  5. 2025ReasoningBank: Scaling Agent Self-Evolving with Reasoning Memorycited by 284
  6. 2025DeepMath-103K: A Large-Scale, Challenging, Decontaminated, and Verifiable Mathematical Dataset for Advancing Reasoningcited by 280
  7. 2025MemAgent: Reshaping Long-Context LLM with Multi-Conv RL-based Memory Agentcited by 246
  8. 2025MEM1: Learning to Synergize Memory and Reasoning for Efficient Long-Horizon Agentscited by 238
  9. 2025Memory-R1: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents to Manage and Utilize Memories via Reinforcement Learningcited by 237
  10. 2025SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skillscited by 192
  11. 2023Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Controlcited by 187
  12. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Self-Evolving AI Agents: A New Paradigm Bridging Foundation Models and Lifelong Agentic Systemscited by 183
  13. 2024MapCoder: Multi-Agent Code Generation for Competitive Problem Solvingcited by 177
  14. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 170
  15. 2026MemSkill: Learning and Evolving Memory Skills for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 142
  16. 2025Evo-Memory: Benchmarking LLM Agent Test-time Learning with Self-Evolving Memorycited by 136
  17. 2026MemRL: Self-Evolving Agents via Runtime Reinforcement Learning on Episodic Memorycited by 129
  18. 2025Memento: Fine-tuning LLM Agents without Fine-tuning LLMscited by 127
  19. 2025From Human Memory to AI Memory: A Survey on Memory Mechanisms in the Era of LLMscited by 124
  20. 2025Alita: Generalist Agent Enabling Scalable Agentic Reasoning with Minimal Predefinition and Maximal Self-Evolutioncited by 116
  21. 2026AutoSkill: Experience-Driven Lifelong Learning via Skill Self-Evolutioncited by 115
  22. 2025Inducing Programmatic Skills for Agentic Taskscited by 111
  23. 2025Memp: Exploring Agent Procedural Memorycited by 103
  24. 2025Agent KB: Leveraging Cross-Domain Experience for Agentic Problem Solvingcited by 94
  25. 2024Buffer of Thoughts: Thought-Augmented Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 91
  26. 2026MemoryArena: Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Taskscited by 84
  27. 2025Memory as Action: Autonomous Context Curation for Long-Horizon Agentic Taskscited by 66
  28. 2026SkillNet: Create, Evaluate, and Connect AI Skillscited by 53
  29. 2024StreamBench: Towards Benchmarking Continuous Improvement of Language Agentscited by 47
  30. 2025Learn to Memorize: Optimizing LLM-based Agents with Adaptive Memory Frameworkcited by 25
  31. 2025ArcMemo: Abstract Reasoning Composition with Lifelong LLM Memorycited by 24
  32. 2025Auto-scaling Continuous Memory for GUI Agentcited by 20
  33. 2025PRINCIPLES: Synthetic Strategy Memory for Proactive Dialogue Agentscited by 15
  34. 2025R2D2: Remembering, Replaying and Dynamic Decision Making with a Reflective Agentic Memorycited by 14
  35. 2026UMEM: Unified Memory Extraction and Management Framework for Generalizable Memorycited by 8
  36. 2026Decocted Experience Improves Test-Time Inference in LLM Agentscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 49.

49 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2026MUSE-Autoskill: Self-Evolving Agents via Skill Creation, Memory, Management, and Evaluationcited by 27
  2. 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
  3. 2026Dream-RSI: Recursive Self-Improvement through Evolving Worldscited by 18
  4. 2026UCOB: Learning to Utilize and Evolve Agentic Skills via Credit-Aware On-Policy Bidirectional Self-Distillationcited by 12
  5. 2026WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolutioncited by 12
  6. 2026LatentSkill: From In-Context Textual Skills to In-Weight Latent Skills for LLM Agentscited by 10
  7. 2026PAST-Bench: Benchmarking the Foundations of Recursive Self-Improvement in Personal Agentscited by 9
  8. 2026Hypothesis-Driven Skill Optimization for LLM Agentscited by 8
  9. 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generationcited by 7
  10. 2026The Regression Tax: Decomposing Why Skills Help and Hurt LLM Agentscited by 5
  11. 2026SkillRise: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Cross-Task Skill Evolutioncited by 5
  12. 2026AgentStream: How Well Do Self-Evolving LLM Agents Perform Under Streaming Tasks?cited by 4
37 more
  1. 2026Rethinking Self-Evolving Agents: Do We Still Need Prescribed Optimization Pipelines?cited by 3
  2. 2026SkillAdam: Stable and Efficient Skill Evolution for Agentscited by 3
  3. 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysiscited by 2
  4. 2026PATS: Policy-Aware Training Scaffolding for Agentic Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  5. 2026Progressive Agent Skill Generation via Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  6. 2026SkillGLoW: Procedural-Family Skill Consolidation for Self-Improving Agents on Long-Horizon Task Streamscited by 2
  7. 2026Skill-3D: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic 3D Spatial Reasoningcited by 1
  8. 2026Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agentscited by 1
  9. 2026Skillware: A Software Ontology and Engineering Lifecycle for Persistent Behavioral Artifactscited by 1
  10. 2026Rethinking Self-Evolution: A Constrained Exploration-Exploitation Process for Mitigating Skill Overfittingcited by 1
  11. 2026EvoHarness-RL: Learning Self-Evolving Runtime Harness for Long-Horizon LLM Agentscited by 1
  12. 2026SkillHEX: Improving Agent Skills via Hypothesis-Driven Autonomous Exploration and Exploitationcited by 1
  13. 2026SkillAligner: Treating Retrieved Skills as Adaptable Drafts at Execution Timecited by 1
  14. 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
  15. 2026SkillPoison: Progressive Skill Poisoning via Successful Experiencescited by 1
  16. 2026Beyond Rubrics: Exploration-Guided Evaluation Skills for Reward Modelingcited by 0
  17. 2026SkillMentor: LLM Agent Self-Evolution via Learning Blind-Spot Diagnosiscited by 0
  18. 2026SkillTFM: Gated Skill Evolution for Training-Free Adaptation of Tabular Foundation Modelscited by 0
  19. 2026SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedbackcited by 0
  20. 2026VCE-Skill: Enhancing Skill Self-Evolution with Version-Change Experiencecited by 0
  21. 2026Auditing Self-Evolution in Financial Agents: Capability Gains, Security Drift, and Execution-Interface Mismatchcited by 0
  22. 2026Towards a Systems Foundation for Agentic Skills: Architecture, Lifecycle, and Securitycited by 0
  23. 2026Grounded Skill Synthesis from Code at Scale for Agentic Intelligencecited by 0
  24. 2026SkillSpec: Intent-Masked Specification Reasoning for Agent Skill Correctnesscited by 0
  25. 2026EnSIMem: Entity-Structured Indexing for Long-Term Agent Memorycited by 0
  26. 2026Just-in-Time Memory: Learning to Curate Task-Adaptive Memory for LLM Agentscited by 0
  27. 2026SkillVine: Agent Skill Evolution via Branching Explorationcited by 0
  28. 2026R2 Flow: Recursive Self-Improvement via Recursive Skill Evolutioncited by 0
  29. 2026EASE: Behavior-Adaptive Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 0
  30. 2026SkillCome: Group Contrast Skill Optimization with Dual Memorycited by 0
  31. 2026SkillFM: Generating Skills for LLM Agents via Latent Flow Matchingcited by 0
  32. 2026SkillSpec: Consensus-Gated Agent Skill Evolution via Representation Specializationcited by 0
  33. 2026TeleTune: Evolving Agent Skills From Offline Telemetrycited by 0
  34. 2026SkillSandbox: Skill Verification via Dynamic Scenario Synthesiscited by 0
  35. 2026Skill-V: Verifiable Self-Evolving Skill Library for Interactive Agentscited by 0
  36. 2026EvoBelief: Falsifiable World Models for Self-Improving LLM Agentscited by 0
  37. 2026Harness^2: Recursive Agent Harnessing for an Open Worldcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SkillForge: Co-Evolving Skills and Agents via Dynamic Skill Lifecycles
  2. 2026SkillComposer: Learning to Evolve Agent Skills for Specification and Generalization
  3. 2026SkillMaster: Toward Autonomous Skill Mastery in LLM Agents
  4. 2026Skill-Pro: Learning Reusable Skills from Experience via Non-Parametric PPO for LLM Agents
  5. 2026SkillLearnBench: Benchmarking Continual Learning Methods for Agent Skill Generation on Real-World Tasks
  6. 2026ContinualSkillBench: Can LLM Agents Truly Evolve Their Capabilities?
  7. 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution
  8. 2026SkillLens: Adaptive Multi-Granularity Skill Reuse for Cost-Efficient LLM Agents