mlsanityData to 13 Oct 2026

SkillJuror: Measuring How Agent Skill Organization Changes Runtime Behavior

arXiv 2606.11543 ↗First posted 10 Jun 2026cs.AI cs.SEcited by 6

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Agent Skills augment large language model (LLM) agents with procedural knowledge at inference time, but current benchmarks rarely distinguish what a Skill says from how it is organized. We study this distinction through Progressive Disclosure, where a concise root file points agents to supporting resources on demand, and compare it with a normalized flat baseline. We present SkillJuror, a framework for evaluating Skill writing paradigms through semantically controlled variants, matched multi-trial evaluations, and trajectory evidence while holding task knowledge fixed. In an 82-task SkillsBench study, Progressive Disclosure changes runtime behavior before aggregate outcomes: distinct Skill resources touched per trajectory rise from 1.18 to 3.85, and effective uptake events rise from 1.33 to 3.92. It also yields 17 additional verifier-passing trials out of 410 matched trials (+4.1%) over the normalized flat baseline. The benefit is task-dependent. Progressive Disclosure helps when supporting resources guide implementation, checking, or repair, but is weaker when success hinges on exact output conventions, numerical thresholds, or long artifact-generation pipelines. These results show that Skill organization is not mere presentation: it can change how agents search and apply procedural knowledge, while outcome gains depend on whether the exposed resources are actionable for the task. Code is available at https://github.com/zhiyuchen-ai/skill-juror.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 24 of its 26 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Jun 2026.

Builds on

24 of 26 references.

Closest ancestors · 7

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skills22 May
  2. 2026More Skills, Worse Agents? Skill Shadowing Degrades Performance When Expanding Skill Libraries21 May
  3. 2026SkillGenBench: Benchmarking Skill Generation Pipelines for LLM Agents18 May
  4. 2026SkillGen: Verified Inference-Time Agent Skill Synthesis9 May
  5. 2026SkillLearnBench: Benchmarking Continual Learning Methods for Agent Skill Generation on Real-World Tasks22 Apr
  6. 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks13 Feb
  7. 2026Skill-Pro: Learning Reusable Skills from Experience via Non-Parametric PPO for LLM Agents2 Feb

Other references · 17

  1. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,156
  2. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,117
  3. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,135
  4. 2024A Survey on LLM-as-a-Judgecited by 1,399
  5. 2022Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineerscited by 1,031
  6. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 842
  7. 2023Large Language Models as Optimizerscited by 842
  8. 2023Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formattingcited by 797
  9. 2024Judging the Judges: A Systematic Study of Position Bias in LLM-as-a-Judgecited by 258
  10. 2025Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challengescited by 198
  11. 2023RestGPT: Connecting Large Language Models with Real-World RESTful APIscited by 133
  12. 2026SWE-Skills-Bench: Do Agent Skills Actually Help in Real-World Software Engineering?cited by 80
5 more
  1. 2026Externalization in LLM Agents: A Unified Review of Memory, Skills, Protocols and Harness Engineeringcited by 73
  2. 2025TRAJECT-Bench:A Trajectory-Aware Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Tool Usecited by 49
  3. 2025Cost-of-Pass: An Economic Framework for Evaluating Language Modelscited by 35
  4. 2026AgentProcessBench: Diagnosing Step-Level Process Quality in Tool-Using Agentscited by 28
  5. 2025Beyond the Final Answer: Evaluating the Reasoning Trajectories of Tool-Augmented Agentscited by 21

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 13 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Demystifying Agent Skills: Why They Work-Until They Don't
  2. 2026Skill Coverage: A Test Adequacy Metric for Agent Skills
  3. 2026Agent Skills for Large Language Models: Architecture, Acquisition, Security, and the Path Forward
  4. 2026SkillFocus: Evolving Agent Skills via Capability Decomposition
  5. 2026From Skill Text to Skill Structure: The Scheduling-Structural-Logical Representation for Agent Skills
  6. 2026SkillGLoW: Procedural-Family Skill Consolidation for Self-Improving Agents on Long-Horizon Task Streams
  7. 2026SkillCommit: Evolving Agent Skills through Behaviorally Validated Scope Expansion
  8. 2026Evidence-Calibrated Runtime Reconstruction for Agent Skills Across Heterogeneous Coding Agents