Learn from Weaknesses: Automated Domain Specialization for Small Computer-Use Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Computer-use agents (CUAs) have recently made substantial progress, but deploying a separate large expert for each software domain remains expensive. Small open computer-use agents are more practical specialization targets, but they remain substantially weaker and exhibit uneven domain-specific failures. A straightforward remedy is to synthesize large-scale training data for the target domain, yet we find that this naive approach yields only marginal improvements. Building on this observation, we introduce LearnWeak, an annotation-free specialization framework for small computer-use agents that uses a stronger reference agent to identify the student's weaknesses in the target domain, synthesize targeted tasks, and construct supervision automatically. LearnWeak further introduces an error-aware specialization objective that disentangles planning and execution errors, enabling more behaviorally precise updates than broad uniform supervision. On OSWorld, LearnWeak achieves average gains of 11.6 and 11.1 percentage points over EvoCUA-8B and OpenCUA-7B, respectively, across eight domains. We also validate that our student-aware dataset generation and training approaches outperform existing autonomous trajectory generation and training baselines. Our work highlights the importance of student awareness in both data synthesis and agent training, pointing toward a more principled and efficient path for specializing small computer-use agents in diverse domains.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 41 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 May 2026.
Builds on
41 of 48 references.
References · 41
- 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 7,916
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,134
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 584
- 2026Kimi K2.5: Visual Agentic Intelligencecited by 449
- 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agentscited by 373
- 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agentscited by 370
- 2025ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Usecited by 246
- 2024ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agentcited by 226
- 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scalecited by 212
- 2025UI-TARS-2 Technical Report: Advancing GUI Agent with Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 205
- 2024Trial and Error: Exploration-Based Trajectory Optimization for LLM Agentscited by 194
- 2024On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agentscited by 187
29 more
- 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agentscited by 156
- 2024OS-Genesis: Automating GUI Agent Trajectory Construction via Reverse Task Synthesiscited by 155
- 2025OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agentscited by 151
- 2026Qwen3.5-Omni Technical Reportcited by 146
- 2024AgentTrek: Agent Trajectory Synthesis via Guiding Replay with Web Tutorialscited by 123
- 2025AgentDAM: Privacy Leakage Evaluation for Autonomous Web Agentscited by 79
- 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agentscited by 72
- 2025SEAgent: Self-Evolving Computer Use Agent with Autonomous Learning from Experiencecited by 68
- 2024TinyAgent: Function Calling at the Edgecited by 55
- 2026EvoCUA: Evolving Computer Use Agents via Learning from Scalable Synthetic Experiencecited by 51
- 2025ZeroGUI: Automating Online GUI Learning at Zero Human Costcited by 44
- 2025AgentSynth: Scalable Task Generation for Generalist Computer-Use Agentscited by 41
- 2025Fara-7B: An Efficient Agentic Model for Computer Usecited by 34
- 2025macOSWorld: A Multilingual Interactive Benchmark for GUI Agentscited by 31
- 2025WorldGUI: An Interactive Benchmark for Desktop GUI Automation from Any Starting Pointcited by 19
- 2025Efficient Agent Training for Computer Usecited by 17
- 2025Unlocking the Power of Function Vectors for Characterizing and Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting in Continual Instruction Tuningcited by 16
- 2025Ferret-UI Lite: Lessons from Building Small On-Device GUI Agentscited by 14
- 2025Imitation Learning for Multi-turn LM Agents via On-policy Expert Correctionscited by 14
- 2025Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting in Large Language Models with Forgetting-aware Pruningcited by 12
- 2025Student-Centered Distillation Narrows the Agentic Gap Between Small and Large LLMscited by 11
- 2025WebSTAR: Scalable Data Synthesis for Computer Use Agents with Step-Level Filteringcited by 11
- 2025WebOperator: Action-Aware Tree Search for Autonomous Agents in Web Environmentcited by 10
- 2025Watch and Learn: Learning to Use Computers from Online Videoscited by 9
- 2025PPTArena: A Benchmark for PowerPoint Editingcited by 9
- 2026Continual GUI Agentscited by 7
- 2026OSExpert: Computer-Use Agents Learning Professional Skills via Explorationcited by 7
- 2025CODA: Coordinating the Cerebrum and Cerebellum for a Dual-Brain Computer Use Agent with Decoupled Reinforcement Learningcited by 6
- 2025RISK: A Framework for GUI Agents in E-commerce Risk Managementcited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Step-level Optimization for Efficient Computer-use Agents
- 2026EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systems
- 2026CUA-Skill: Develop Skills for Computer Using Agent
- 2026Structured Distillation of Web Agent Capabilities Enables Generalization
- 2026Yet Even Less Is Even Better For Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding LLMs
- 2026SkillGym: Training Skill-Use Agents with Automatic Verifiable Environment Generation
- 2026SWE-Skills-Bench: Do Agent Skills Actually Help in Real-World Software Engineering?
- 2026Agent Skills in the Wild: An Empirical Study of Security Vulnerabilities at Scale