mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

ReSkill: Reconciling Skill Creation with Policy Optimization in Agentic RL

arXiv 2606.01619 ↗First posted 1 Jun 2026cs.AI cs.LG stat.MLcited by 13

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Agentic reinforcement learning (RL) enables LLM agents to improve continuously from environment rewards, yet the resulting policies do not systematically accumulate reusable strategies that generalize across tasks. Modular skills can provide such reusable strategies, yet existing skill-augmented RL methods decouple skill creation from policy optimization, risking adopting skills that conflict with the evolving policy. Inspired by Anthropic's Skill Creator, we introduce ReSkill, an RL-in-the-loop skill creation framework that reconciles skill evolution with policy learning. ReSkill exploits the group-wise structure of GRPO to naturally embed three mechanisms with only marginal additional overhead: (1) an assertion-driven skill creator that diagnoses failures from past experience and proposes conditional, trigger-based skill revisions; (2) within-group rollout sampling that enables controlled comparison of skill versions, capturing which version best supports the policy's ongoing learning; and (3) Thompson Sampling with adaptive discounting to balance exploration and exploitation in skill version selection as the policy evolves. Across several domains, ReSkill consistently outperforms existing memory and skill-based RL methods, with the largest gains on unseen tasks. Analysis of the skill lifecycle shows skills being automatically created, tested, refined, and pruned as the policy improves, demonstrating reconciled skill-policy co-evolution.

Key facts. Cited by 13 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 51 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2026.

Builds on

51 of 60 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skills26 Mar
  2. 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learning9 Feb

Other references · 49

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37 more
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 13.

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  1. 2026SkillForge: Co-Evolving Skills and Agents via Dynamic Skill Lifecycles
  2. 2026Skill-R1: Agent Skill Evolution via Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2026SkillOS: Learning Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agents
  4. 2026Dynamic Dual-Granularity Skill Bank for Agentic RL
  5. 2026Skill1: Unified Evolution of Skill-Augmented Agents via Reinforcement Learning
  6. 2026Dynamic Skill Lifecycle Management for Agentic Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2026Skill Reuse as Compression in Agentic RL
  8. 2026MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution