# AstraFlow: Dataflow-Oriented Reinforcement Learning for Agentic LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15565 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15565/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reinforcement learning for LLM agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 42 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Reinforcement learning for LLM agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/reinforcement-learning-for-llm-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19256/) (2024)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09516/) (2025)
- [Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12599/) (2025)
- [Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12122/) (2024)
- [Group Sequence Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18071/) (2025)
- [Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13657/) (2025)
- [LESS: Selecting Influential Data for Targeted Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04333/) (2024)
- [DeepResearcher: Scaling Deep Research via Reinforcement Learning in Real-world Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03160/) (2025)
- [VAPO: Efficient and Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Advanced Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05118/) (2025)
- [SWE-RL: Advancing LLM Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning on Open Software Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18449/) (2025)
- [AReaL: A Large-Scale Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning System for Language Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24298/) (2025)
- [Beyond Ten Turns: Unlocking Long-Horizon Agentic Search with Large-Scale Asynchronous RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07976/) (2025)
- [LLM Multi-Agent Systems: Challenges and Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03578/) (2024)
- [Act Only When It Pays: Efficient Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning via Selective Rollouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02177/) (2025)
- [Not All Rollouts are Useful: Down-Sampling Rollouts in LLM Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13818/) (2025)
- [Asynchronous RLHF: Faster and More Efficient Off-Policy RL for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18252/) (2024)
- [AgentRL: Scaling Agentic Reinforcement Learning with a Multi-Turn, Multi-Task Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04206/) (2025)
- [StreamRL: Scalable, Heterogeneous, and Elastic RL for LLMs with Disaggregated Stream Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15930/) (2025)
- [Improving Data Efficiency for LLM Reinforcement Fine-tuning Through Difficulty-targeted Online Data Selection and Rollout Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05316/) (2025)
- [Prosperity before Collapse: How Far Can Off-Policy RL Reach with Stale Data on LLMs?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01161/) (2025)
- [ComputerRL: Scaling End-to-End Online Reinforcement Learning for Computer Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14040/) (2025)
- [SkyRL-Agent: Efficient RL Training for Multi-turn LLM Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16108/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Rollout Efficiency in Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning Large Language Models: A Taxonomy and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25463/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reinforcement learning (RL) is increasingly used to improve the reasoning, coding, and tool-use capabilities of large language models, but agentic RL remains prohibitively expensive. Scaling RL to agentic LLMs requires supporting complex workloads, including multi-policy collaborative training, while efficiently using elastic, heterogeneous, and cross-region compute resources. Existing LLM RL systems support some of these capabilities, but each new extension often requires dedicated system engineering. This burden arises from trainer-centered control architectures and the lack of principled abstractions for RL system components. To address these limitations, we propose AstraFlow, a dataflow-oriented RL system that replaces conventional trainer-centered control with principled component abstractions. In AstraFlow, rollout services, dataflow management, and training are decoupled into autonomous components, enabling the system to natively support complex multi-policy agentic RL workloads and efficiently exploit diverse compute resources. We evaluate AstraFlow across math, code, search, and AgentBench workloads, showing that the same system supports multi-policy training, elastic scaling, heterogeneous cross-region execution, and composable data algorithms without system-level code changes. In multi-policy collaborative training, AstraFlow achieves comparable or better accuracy than existing RL systems while speeding up training time by 2.7x.