SkillBrew: Multi-Objective Curation of Skill Banks for LLM Agents
On the map: Retrieval-augmented generation → Agentic RAG, agents and memory
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Abstract (arXiv)
Retrieval-augmented LLM agents increasingly rely on curated skill banks: collections of reusable textual principles that guide decision making on complex tasks. Existing approaches typically expand these banks in an append-only fashion, continuously adding new skills without removing redundant, outdated, or harmful ones, resulting in inefficient and poorly curated repositories. In this paper, we formulate the skill bank curation as a constrained multi-objective problem: a desirable bank must be useful for the agent, diverse in its content, and provide good coverage of the query distribution. To this end, we introduce SkillBrew, a multi-objective curation framework that formalizes skill bank curation as Pareto-aware optimization under a utility constraint, and solves it via a bi-level propose-then-verify loop. We evaluate our approach on two public benchmarks. Our findings suggest that treating skill banks as objects of principled curation, rather than ever-growing append-only logs, is an important step toward building self-improving LLM agents.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Placed in Agentic RAG, agents and memory, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation. Builds on 8 of its 22 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.
Builds on
8 of 22 references.
References · 8
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,502
- 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,219
- 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,167
- 2026Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skillscited by 180
- 2026SimpleMem: Efficient Lifelong Memory for LLM Agentscited by 145
- 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verificationcited by 124
- 2026SkillForge: Forging Domain-Specific, Self-Evolving Agent Skills in Cloud Technical Supportcited by 47
- 2026Skill-Pro: Learning Reusable Skills from Experience via Non-Parametric PPO for LLM Agentscited by 46
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026SkillRet: A Large-Scale Benchmark for Skill Retrieval in LLM Agents
- 2026Compositional Skill Routing for LLM Agents: Decompose, Retrieve, and Compose
- 2026SkillSeek: Revisiting Agent Skill Retrieval at Marketplace Scale
- 2026SkillTrace: Traversing a Query-Skill Graph for Composable LLM Agents
- 2026SkillDAG: Self-Evolving Typed Skill Graphs for LLM Skill Selection at Scale
- 2025SkillFlow: Scalable and Efficient Agent Skill Retrieval System
- 2026Graph-of-Skills: Dependency-Aware Structural Retrieval for Massive Agent Skills
- 2026SkillCorpus: Consolidating and Evaluating the Open Skill Ecosystem for Real-World LLM Agents