ReSkill: Reconciling Skill Creation with Policy Optimization in Agentic RL
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
- 2026Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skills26 Mar
- 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learning9 Feb
Other references · 49
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 13.
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- 2026SafeEvolve: Harness-Policy Co-Evolution from Agent Experience for Safety Alignmentcited by 6
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- 2026UniSkill: Learning Actor-Aligned Skill Proposals for an Evolving Policy7 Oct 2026
- 2026Experience Funnel: A State-Policy Alternating Loop for Self-Evolving Agents8 Sep 2026
- 2026SafeEvolve: Harness-Policy Co-Evolution from Agent Experience for Safety Alignment2 Sep 2026
- 2026Exploit More, Explore Smarter for Budget-Constrained Agentic Search24 Aug 2026
- 2026CAPO: Constraint-Aware Prompt Optimization for LLM Agents17 Aug 2026
- 2026Emotion2Skill: Model-Internal Emotion Signals for Adaptive Skill Selection and Evolution10 Aug 2026
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- 2026Continual Learning in Transitioncited by 0
- 2026EvoRS: On-Policy Self-Evolution of Reward Systems for Open-Ended Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026SkillRubric: Co-Evolving Actor Guidance and Evaluator Rubrics for Multimodal Agentscited by 0
- 2026SkillRubric: Co-Evolving Actor Guidance and Evaluator Rubrics for Multimodal Agents28 Sep 2026
- 2026EvoRS: On-Policy Self-Evolution of Reward Systems for Open-Ended Reinforcement Learning11 Sep 2026
- 2026Write, Execute, Refine: From Skill Followers to Skill Optimizers via Reinforcement Learning from Execution Feedback18 Aug 2026
- 2026Continual Learning in Transition6 Aug 2026
- 2026SPyCE: Skill-Policy Co-evolution for Multimodal Agents15 Jul 2026
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