MMSkills: Towards Multimodal Skills for General Visual Agents
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Abstract (arXiv)
Reusable skills have become a core substrate for improving agent capabilities, yet most existing skill packages encode reusable behavior primarily as textual prompts, executable code, or learned routines. For visual agents, however, procedural knowledge is inherently multimodal: reuse depends not only on what operation to perform, but also on recognizing the relevant state, interpreting visual evidence of progress or failure, and deciding what to do next. We formalize this requirement as multimodal procedural knowledge and address three practical challenges: (I) what a multimodal skill package should contain; (II) where such packages can be derived from public interaction experience; and (III) how agents can consult multimodal evidence at inference time without excessive image context or over-anchoring to reference screenshots. We introduce MMSkills, a framework for representing, generating, and using reusable multimodal procedures for runtime visual decision making. Each MMSkill is a compact, state-conditioned package that couples a textual procedure with runtime state cards and multi-view keyframes. To construct these packages, we develop an agentic trajectory-to-skill Generator that transforms public non-evaluation trajectories into reusable multimodal skills through workflow grouping, procedure induction, visual grounding, and meta-skill-guided auditing. To use them, we introduce a branch-loaded multimodal skill agent: selected state cards and keyframes are inspected in a temporary branch, aligned with the live environment, and distilled into structured guidance for the main agent. Experiments across GUI and game-based visual-agent benchmarks show that MMSkills consistently improve both frontier and smaller multimodal agents, suggesting that external multimodal procedural knowledge complements model-internal priors.
Key facts. Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 42 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 May 2026.
Builds on
42 of 52 references.
References · 42
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
- 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
- 2023Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contextscited by 3,455
- 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
- 2023LongBench: A Bilingual, Multitask Benchmark for Long Context Understandingcited by 1,417
- 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,242
- 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,210
- 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agentscited by 704
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 610
- 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agentscited by 567
- 2024GPT-4V(ision) is a Generalist Web Agent, if Groundedcited by 563
- 2023Describe, Explain, Plan and Select: Interactive Planning with Large Language Models Enables Open-World Multi-Task Agentscited by 398
30 more
- 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agentscited by 382
- 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agentscited by 378
- 2023Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Controlcited by 319
- 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learningcited by 278
- 2025ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Usecited by 254
- 2024OmniParser for Pure Vision Based GUI Agentcited by 198
- 2025SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skillscited by 192
- 2024Agent S: An Open Agentic Framework that Uses Computers Like a Humancited by 187
- 2023JARVIS-1: Open-World Multi-task Agents with Memory-Augmented Multimodal Language Modelscited by 171
- 2026Agent Skills for Large Language Models: Architecture, Acquisition, Security, and the Path Forwardcited by 113
- 2026EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 107
- 2026SkillX: Automatically Constructing Skill Knowledge Bases for Agentscited by 76
- 2026XSkill: Continual Learning from Experience and Skills in Multimodal Agentscited by 75
- 2025MMBench-GUI: Hierarchical Multi-Platform Evaluation Framework for GUI Agentscited by 67
- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settingscited by 65
- 2025Your Agent May Misevolve: Emergent Risks in Self-evolving LLM Agentscited by 62
- 2025lmgame-Bench: How Good are LLMs at Playing Games?cited by 55
- 2025RiOSWorld: Benchmarking the Risk of Multimodal Computer-Use Agentscited by 35
- 2026GLM-5V-Turbo: Toward a Native Foundation Model for Multimodal Agentscited by 34
- 2026CUA-Skill: Develop Skills for Computer Using Agentcited by 33
- 2025macOSWorld: A Multilingual Interactive Benchmark for GUI Agentscited by 32
- 2024RethinkMCTS: Refining Erroneous Thoughts in Monte Carlo Tree Search for Code Generationcited by 26
- 2024AlignRec: Aligning and Training in Multimodal Recommendationscited by 21
- 2025Mirage-1: Augmenting and Updating GUI Agent with Hierarchical Multimodal Skillscited by 19
- 2025LoopTool: Closing the Data-Training Loop for Robust LLM Tool Callscited by 17
- 2026SkillTester: Benchmarking Utility and Security of Agent Skillscited by 10
- 2026MonoScale: Scaling Multi-Agent System with Monotonic Improvementcited by 5
- 2025DeskVision: Large Scale Desktop Region Captioning for Advanced GUI Agentscited by 4
- 2025ATGen: Adversarial Reinforcement Learning for Test Case Generationcited by 4
- 2024DREAM: A Dual Representation Learning Model for Multimodal Recommendationcited by 1
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 16.
16 papers.
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- 2026Evo-Harness: Context-to-Harness Skill Compilation for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 16
- 2026LatentSkill: From In-Context Textual Skills to In-Weight Latent Skills for LLM Agentscited by 10
- 2026LongDS-Bench: On the Failure of Long-Horizon Agentic Data Analysiscited by 4
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysiscited by 2
- 2026Reflect, Revise, Reuse: Training-Free Skill Evolution for GUI Agentscited by 2
- 2026World Action Agent: Harnessing VLMs for Robot Manipulation via World Action Rehearsalcited by 2
- 2026Learning from Unreachable Rewards: Hint-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning for Generative Recommendationcited by 1
- 2026EM^2Mem: Event-Centric Multimodal Memory for Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
- 2026Omni-IO Skills: Harnessing Your Agent Omni-Nativecited by 0
- 2026SkillRubric: Co-Evolving Actor Guidance and Evaluator Rubrics for Multimodal Agentscited by 0
- 2026MMSkillRisk: Can Agents Stay Safe When Multimodal Skills Become Traps?cited by 0
4 more
- 2026ViSkill: Reinforcing VLM Agents with Evolving Visual-Native Skillscited by 0
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Inductioncited by 0
- 2026VisualCoding: Learning Executable Skills for Reliable Visual Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026VIEWCRAFT: Evolving What Multimodal Agents See and How They Read Itcited by 0
- 2026VIEWCRAFT: Evolving What Multimodal Agents See and How They Read It11 Oct 2026
- 2026VisualCoding: Learning Executable Skills for Reliable Visual Reasoning9 Oct 2026
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Induction9 Oct 2026
- 2026ViSkill: Reinforcing VLM Agents with Evolving Visual-Native Skills8 Oct 2026
- 2026MMSkillRisk: Can Agents Stay Safe When Multimodal Skills Become Traps?28 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillRubric: Co-Evolving Actor Guidance and Evaluator Rubrics for Multimodal Agents28 Sep 2026
- 2026Omni-IO Skills: Harnessing Your Agent Omni-Native25 Sep 2026
- 2026World Action Agent: Harnessing VLMs for Robot Manipulation via World Action Rehearsal24 Sep 2026
- 2026Reflect, Revise, Reuse: Training-Free Skill Evolution for GUI Agents15 Sep 2026
- 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agents4 Sep 2026
- 2026EM^2Mem: Event-Centric Multimodal Memory for Large Language Models1 Sep 2026
- 2026Evo-Harness: Context-to-Harness Skill Compilation for Self-Evolving Agents15 Aug 2026
4 more
- 2026Learning from Unreachable Rewards: Hint-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning for Generative Recommendation12 Aug 2026
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysis4 Jun 2026
- 2026LatentSkill: From In-Context Textual Skills to In-Weight Latent Skills for LLM Agents4 Jun 2026
- 2026LongDS-Bench: On the Failure of Long-Horizon Agentic Data Analysis28 May 2026
- 2026Evo-Harness: Context-to-Harness Skill Compilation for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 16
- 2026LatentSkill: From In-Context Textual Skills to In-Weight Latent Skills for LLM Agentscited by 10
- 2026LongDS-Bench: On the Failure of Long-Horizon Agentic Data Analysiscited by 4
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysiscited by 2
- 2026Reflect, Revise, Reuse: Training-Free Skill Evolution for GUI Agentscited by 2
- 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
- 2026Omni-IO Skills: Harnessing Your Agent Omni-Nativecited by 0
- 2026MMSkillRisk: Can Agents Stay Safe When Multimodal Skills Become Traps?cited by 0
- 2026ViSkill: Reinforcing VLM Agents with Evolving Visual-Native Skillscited by 0
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Inductioncited by 0
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Induction9 Oct 2026
- 2026ViSkill: Reinforcing VLM Agents with Evolving Visual-Native Skills8 Oct 2026
- 2026MMSkillRisk: Can Agents Stay Safe When Multimodal Skills Become Traps?28 Sep 2026
- 2026Omni-IO Skills: Harnessing Your Agent Omni-Native25 Sep 2026
- 2026Reflect, Revise, Reuse: Training-Free Skill Evolution for GUI Agents15 Sep 2026
- 2026From Interaction Traces to Persistent Skills: Online Evolution for Computer-Use Agents4 Sep 2026
- 2026Evo-Harness: Context-to-Harness Skill Compilation for Self-Evolving Agents15 Aug 2026
- 2026Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysis4 Jun 2026
- 2026LatentSkill: From In-Context Textual Skills to In-Weight Latent Skills for LLM Agents4 Jun 2026
- 2026LongDS-Bench: On the Failure of Long-Horizon Agentic Data Analysis28 May 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026Agent Skills Should Go Beyond Text: The Case for Visual Skills
- 2026V-Gym: Enhancing Agentic Visual Reasoning via Skill-Data Co-Evolution
- 2026VISUALSKILL: Multimodal Skills for Computer-Use Agents
- 2026AgentVista: Evaluating Multimodal Agents in Ultra-Challenging Realistic Visual Scenarios
- 2026Skill-CMIB: Multimodal Agent Skill for Consistent Action via Conditional Multimodal Information Bottleneck
- 2026Paint What You See: Benchmarking Dexterous Visual Tool Use in Multimodal Agents
- 2025DeepEyesV2: Toward Agentic Multimodal Model
- 2026VisGym: Diverse, Customizable, Scalable Environments for Multimodal Agents