mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SkillFlow: Flow-Driven Recursive Skill Evolution for Agentic Orchestration

arXiv 2605.14089 ↗First posted 13 May 2026cs.AIcited by 6

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

Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, a variety of powerful LLM-based agentic systems have been applied to automate complex tasks through task orchestration. However, existing orchestration methods still face key challenges, including strategy collapse under reward maximization, high gradient variance with opaque credit assignment, and unguided skill evolution whose decisions are typically made by directly prompting an LLM to judge rather than derived from principled training signals. To address these challenges, we propose SkillFlow, a flow-based framework that takes a trainable Supervisor as the agent and a structured environment with dynamic skill library and frozen executor, automating task orchestration through multi-turn interaction. SkillFlow employs Tempered Trajectory Balance (TTB), a regression-based flow-matching loss that samples trajectories proportional to reward, preserving diverse orchestration strategies rather than collapsing to a single mode. The same flow objective yields a jointly learned backward policy that provides transparent per-step credit assignment at zero additional inference cost. Building on these flow diagnostics, a recursive skill evolution mechanism determines when to evolve, what skills to create or prune, and where decision gaps lie -- closing the loop from training signal to autonomous capability growth. Experimental results on 14 datasets show that SkillFlow significantly outperforms baselines across question answering, mathematical reasoning, code generation, and real-world interactive decision making tasks. Our code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/SkillFlow-E850.

Key facts. Cited by 6 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 64 of its 76 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 May 2026.

Builds on

64 of 76 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026SkillClaw: Let Skills Evolve Collectively with Agentic Evolver9 Apr
  2. 2026SkillX: Automatically Constructing Skill Knowledge Bases for Agents6 Apr
  3. 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verification2 Apr
  4. 2026EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systems3 Mar
  5. 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agents24 Feb
  6. 2026Agent Skills for Large Language Models: Architecture, Acquisition, Security, and the Path Forward12 Feb
  7. 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learning9 Feb
  8. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Self-Improving Agent with Skill Library18 Dec

Other references · 56

  1. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  3. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  4. 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
  5. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  6. 2017TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehensioncited by 2,895
  7. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scalecited by 2,678
  8. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  9. 2015High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimationcited by 1,916
  10. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,906
  11. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  12. 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
38 more
  1. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
  2. 2020What Disease does this Patient Have? A Large-scale Open Domain Question Answering Dataset from Medical Examscited by 1,324
  3. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,197
  4. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,143
  5. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agentscited by 956
  6. 2021MuSiQue: Multihop Questions via Single-hop Question Compositioncited by 893
  7. 2024RouteLLM: Learning to Route LLMs with Preference Datacited by 633
  8. 2023Language Agent Tree Search Unifies Reasoning Acting and Planning in Language Modelscited by 551
  9. 2024Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agentscited by 537
  10. 2025The Lessons of Developing Process Reward Models in Mathematical Reasoningcited by 402
  11. 2024AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generationcited by 395
  12. 2021Flow Network based Generative Models for Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate Generationcited by 384
  13. 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systemscited by 360
  14. 2025RAGEN: Understanding Self-Evolution in LLM Agents via Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 357
  15. 2023AgentTuning: Enabling Generalized Agent Abilities for LLMscited by 319
  16. 2021GFlowNet Foundationscited by 286
  17. 2025VAPO: Efficient and Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Advanced Reasoning Taskscited by 281
  18. 2023FireAct: Toward Language Agent Fine-tuningcited by 247
  19. 2022Trajectory balance: Improved credit assignment in GFlowNetscited by 244
  20. 2024Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 235
  21. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Self-Evolving AI Agents: A New Paradigm Bridging Foundation Models and Lifelong Agentic Systemscited by 177
  22. 2026AutoSkill: Experience-Driven Lifelong Learning via Skill Self-Evolutioncited by 105
  23. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Interactive LLM Agentscited by 103
  24. 2025Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestrationcited by 102
  25. 2026Skill-SD: Skill-Conditioned Self-Distillation for Multi-turn LLM Agentscited by 75
  26. 2025Tree Search for LLM Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 73
  27. 2026XSkill: Continual Learning from Experience and Skills in Multimodal Agentscited by 71
  28. 2023Robust Scheduling with GFlowNetscited by 67
  29. 2025In-the-Flow Agentic System Optimization for Effective Planning and Tool Usecited by 67
  30. 2026Hindsight Credit Assignment for Long-Horizon LLM Agentscited by 51
  31. 2025LLM Collaboration With Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 47
  32. 2025Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Step Rewardscited by 45
  33. 2025R-PRM: Reasoning-Driven Process Reward Modelingcited by 38
  34. 2025The Choice of Divergence: A Neglected Key to Mitigating Diversity Collapse in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardcited by 36
  35. 2026When Single-Agent with Skills Replace Multi-Agent Systems and When They Failcited by 34
  36. 2024Flow of Reasoning: Training LLMs for Divergent Reasoning with Minimal Examplescited by 29
  37. 2025Difficulty-Aware Agentic Orchestration for Query-Specific Multi-Agent Workflowscited by 23
  38. 2026InT: Self-Proposed Interventions Enable Credit Assignment in LLM Reasoningcited by 14

50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SkillVine: Agent Skill Evolution via Branching Exploration
  2. 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agents
  3. 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution
  4. 2026SkillForge: Co-Evolving Skills and Agents via Dynamic Skill Lifecycles
  5. 2026Skill Self-Play: Pushing the Frontier of LLM Capability with Co-Evolving Skills
  6. 2026SkillAudit: Ground-Truth-Free Skill Evolution via Paired Trajectory Auditing
  7. 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarks
  8. 2026ArenaFlow: From Trajectory Ranking to Hierarchical Credit Propagation for Open-Ended Agent RL