Policy and World Modeling Co-Training for Language Agents
On the map: World models → World models for language agents
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Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement learning (RL) improves large language model (LLM) agents by teaching them which actions lead to high rewards, but provides little supervision on what those actions do to the environment. World modeling (WM) can fill this gap, yet existing approaches often require separate simulators, extra training stages, or additional inference-time computation. We observe that on-policy RL rollouts already contain the needed signal: each transition pairs an action with its resulting next observation. Based on this observation, we propose PaW, a Policy and World modeling co-training framework that adds auxiliary WM supervision to the same policy during RL, without changing the inference paradigm. To make auxiliary WM supervision informative and stable, PaW introduces three components: action-entropy-based WM data selection, noise-tolerant WM loss, and reward-adaptive loss balancing. Experiments on three agentic task benchmarks show consistent improvements over strong RL baselines across models and RL algorithms. These results suggest that standard RL rollouts are a practical source of WM supervision for language-agent training.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in World models for language agents, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 46 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2026.
Builds on
46 of 66 references.
Closest ancestors · 9
Same direction, newest first
- 2026WebWorld: A Large-Scale World Model for Web Agent Training16 Feb
- 2026Imagine-then-Plan: Agent Learning from Adaptive Lookahead with World Models13 Jan
- 2025From Word to World: Can Large Language Models be Implicit Text-based World Models?21 Dec
- 2025World Modelling Improves Language Model Agents3 Jun
- 2025WebEvolver: Enhancing Web Agent Self-Improvement with Coevolving World Model23 Apr
- 2024Is Your LLM Secretly a World Model of the Internet? Model-Based Planning for Web Agents10 Nov
- 2024Web Agents with World Models: Learning and Leveraging Environment Dynamics in Web Navigation17 Oct
- 2023Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Model24 May
- 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning8 Oct
Other references · 37
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
- 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
- 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
- 2017TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehensioncited by 2,895
- 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
- 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
- 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 1,598
- 2018World Modelscited by 1,444
- 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
- 2020Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Stepscited by 1,259
25 more
- 2022Text Embeddings by Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Pre-trainingcited by 1,216
- 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,210
- 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,197
- 2022When Not to Trust Language Models: Investigating Effectiveness of Parametric and Non-Parametric Memoriescited by 1,103
- 2022Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Modelscited by 1,054
- 2020Mastering Atari with Discrete World Modelscited by 990
- 2026DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligencecited by 877
- 2026GLM-5: from Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineeringcited by 502
- 2025Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Trainingcited by 442
- 2017Robust Loss Functions under Label Noise for Deep Neural Networkscited by 441
- 2023AgentTuning: Enabling Generalized Agent Abilities for LLMscited by 319
- 2023FireAct: Toward Language Agent Fine-tuningcited by 247
- 2025ZeroSearch: Incentivize the Search Capability of LLMs without Searchingcited by 203
- 2024AgentGym: Evolving Large Language Model-based Agents across Diverse Environmentscited by 120
- 2025From AI for Science to Agentic Science: A Survey on Autonomous Scientific Discoverycited by 74
- 2023Learning to Model the World with Languagecited by 66
- 2025AutoGUI: Scaling GUI Grounding with Automatic Functionality Annotations from LLMscited by 18
- 2026Proximity-Based Multi-Turn Optimization: Practical Credit Assignment for LLM Agent Trainingcited by 18
- 2025Safe Delta: Consistently Preserving Safety when Fine-Tuning LLMs on Diverse Datasetscited by 17
- 2025Is PRM Necessary? Problem-Solving RL Implicitly Induces PRM Capability in LLMscited by 12
- 2025Beyond Emotion Recognition: A Multi-Turn Multimodal Emotion Understanding and Reasoning Benchmarkcited by 12
- 2025LLM-Driven Instance-Specific Heuristic Generation and Selectioncited by 11
- 2026Train at Moving Edge: Online-Verified Prompt Selection for Efficient RL Training of Large Reasoning Modelcited by 10
- 2025UIPro: Unleashing Superior Interaction Capability For GUI Agentscited by 3
- 2026AHD Agent: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Automatic Heuristic Designcited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.
11 papers.
- 2026The Dark Room in the Reward Channel: Dense Prediction Rewards Collapse GRPO-Trained LLM Agents -- and The Channel, Not the Content, Decides What Workscited by 3
- 2026EnvACE: Internalizing Environment Dynamics via World Rehearsal for Agentic Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Designcited by 1
- 2026Act More, Decide Less: Skill-Guided Adaptive Action Chunking for Long-Horizon LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026TrajMind: Chaining Role-Specialized LoRAs for Fast-and-Slow Collective Trajectory Anomaly Diagnosiscited by 0
- 2026Don't Mask the Environment: Observation Supervision Changes How Agents Explore Under RLcited by 0
- 2026Dual-Frontier: When Can an Agent Trust Its World Model?cited by 0
- 2026Does Learning to Predict the World Help Agents Act? Auditing World-Model Post-Trainingcited by 0
- 2026RLTL;DR: Self-improvement by Internalizing Self-generated Feedbackcited by 0
- 2026EVOKE: Eliciting World Knowledge in Agents for Transferable Decision-Makingcited by 0
- 2026Environmental Feedback Modeling Matters: Rethinking Feedback Treatment in Agentic Hindsight Self-Distillationcited by 0
- 2026Environmental Feedback Modeling Matters: Rethinking Feedback Treatment in Agentic Hindsight Self-Distillation8 Oct 2026
- 2026EVOKE: Eliciting World Knowledge in Agents for Transferable Decision-Making29 Sep 2026
- 2026RLTL;DR: Self-improvement by Internalizing Self-generated Feedback29 Sep 2026
- 2026Does Learning to Predict the World Help Agents Act? Auditing World-Model Post-Training27 Sep 2026
- 2026Dual-Frontier: When Can an Agent Trust Its World Model?22 Sep 2026
- 2026Don't Mask the Environment: Observation Supervision Changes How Agents Explore Under RL17 Sep 2026
- 2026TrajMind: Chaining Role-Specialized LoRAs for Fast-and-Slow Collective Trajectory Anomaly Diagnosis2 Sep 2026
- 2026Act More, Decide Less: Skill-Guided Adaptive Action Chunking for Long-Horizon LLM Agents2 Sep 2026
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Design10 Aug 2026
- 2026EnvACE: Internalizing Environment Dynamics via World Rehearsal for Agentic Reinforcement Learning6 Aug 2026
- 2026The Dark Room in the Reward Channel: Dense Prediction Rewards Collapse GRPO-Trained LLM Agents -- and The Channel, Not the Content, Decides What Works23 Jul 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Reinforcement World Model Learning for LLM-based Agents
- 2025Language-conditioned world model improves policy generalization by reading environmental descriptions
- 2023Large Language Model as a Policy Teacher for Training Reinforcement Learning Agents
- 2025RLVR-World: Training World Models with Reinforcement Learning
- 2026How do World Models and Policies Compose in LLM Agents? A Joint Spectral and Behavioral Account
- 2026Learning Agentic Policy from Action Guidance
- 2026TAPO: Transition-Aware Policy Optimization for LLM Agents
- 2026MAGE: Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Language Agents toward Strategic Exploration and Exploitation