mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SkillSmith: Compiling Agent Skills into Boundary-Guided Runtime Interfaces

arXiv 2605.15215 ↗First posted 12 May 2026cs.AI cs.SEcited by 3

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, skills have been widely adopted in large language model (LLM)-based agent systems across various domains. In existing frameworks, skills are typically injected into the agent reasoning loop as contextual guidance once matched to a runtime task, enabling specialized task-solving capabilities. We find that this execution paradigm introduces two major sources of redundancy: irrelevant context injection and repeated skill-specific reasoning and planning. To this end, we propose SkillSmith, a boundary-first compiler-runtime framework that compiles skill packages offline into minimal executable interfaces. By extracting fine-grained operational boundaries from skills, SkillSmith enables agents to dynamically access and execute only the relevant components at runtime, thereby minimizing unnecessary context injection and redundant reasoning overhead. In the evaluation on SkillsBench benchmark, SkillSmith reduces solve-stage token usage by 57.44%, thinking iterations by 42.99%, solve time by 50.57% (2.02x faster), and token-proportional monetary cost by 57.44% compared with using raw-skills. Moreover, compiled artifacts produced by a stronger model can be reused by a smaller or more efficient runtime model, improving task accuracy in cases where raw skill interpretation fails. The source code and data are available at https://github.com/AetherHeart-AI/Aeloon.

Key facts. Cited by 3 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 18 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.

Builds on

18 of 28 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026SkVM: Revisiting Language VM for Skills across Heterogenous LLMs and Harnesses3 Apr
  2. 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks13 Feb

Other references · 16

  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. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
  8. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  9. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,906
  10. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  11. 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIscited by 1,302
  12. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,197
4 more
  1. 2023SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programscited by 1,107
  2. 2022PAL: Program-aided Language Modelscited by 635
  3. 2024Magentic-One: A Generalist Multi-Agent System for Solving Complex Taskscited by 221
  4. 2022Prompting Is Programming: A Query Language for Large Language Modelscited by 110

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Subagents vs Agent Skills: Executing Reusable Knowledge for Long-Horizon Agentic Tasks
  2. 2026SkillSentry: Reliable Skill Execution for LLM Agents via Runtime Assurance
  3. 2026A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications
  4. 2026Formal Skill: Programmable Runtime Skills for Efficient and Accurate LLM Agents
  5. 2026GraSP: Graph-Structured Skill Compositions for LLM Agents
  6. 2026SkCC: Portable and Secure Skill Compilation for Cross-Framework LLM Agents
  7. 2026SkillCraft: Can LLM Agents Learn to Use Tools Skillfully?
  8. 2026SkillGym: Internalizing Human Skills into LLMs for Real-World Problem Solving