mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SEAGym: An Evaluation Environment for Self-Evolving LLM Agents

arXiv 2606.17546 ↗First posted 16 Jun 2026cs.AIcited by 8

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Self-evolving LLM-based agents improve mainly by changing their agent harness: the structured execution layer around a base model, including prompts, memory, tools, middleware, runtime state, and the model-tool interaction loop. Existing evaluations often reduce this process to isolated task scores or a single sequential curve, obscuring whether an update produces reusable improvement, overfits recent tasks, increases cost, or harms older behavior. We introduce SEAGym, an evaluation environment for measuring agent harness updates across training, validation, test, replay, and cost records. SEAGym turns Harbor-compatible benchmarks into dynamic self-evolution task sources with train batches, frozen update-validation, held-out ID and OOD transfer views, replay diagnostics, and saved snapshot and metric records. Instantiating SEAGym on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and HLE, we compare ACE, TF-GRPO, and AHE under a shared epoch/batch protocol. The results show that these evaluation views provide complementary signals about the evolution process: frequent updates may fail to improve held-out performance, useful intermediate snapshots may collapse later, and source diversity and model backend can affect harness reliability.

Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 33 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2026.

Builds on

33 of 55 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026SEA-Eval: A Benchmark for Evaluating Self-Evolving Agents Beyond Episodic Assessment10 Apr
  2. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Self-Evolving AI Agents: A New Paradigm Bridging Foundation Models and Lifelong Agentic Systems10 Aug
  3. 2025Survey on Evaluation of LLM-based Agents20 Mar
  4. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domains17 Jun

Other references · 29

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  2. 2016Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networkscited by 4,718
  3. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  4. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  5. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  6. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  7. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
  8. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  9. 2017Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learningcited by 1,871
  10. 2018Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Reviewcited by 1,313
  11. 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIscited by 1,302
  12. 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,134
17 more
  1. 2023GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistantscited by 1,084
  2. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,000
  3. 2019Three scenarios for continual learningcited by 610
  4. 2026Terminal-Bench: Benchmarking Agents on Hard, Realistic Tasks in Command Line Interfacescited by 515
  5. 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMscited by 377
  6. 2025RAGEN: Understanding Self-Evolution in LLM Agents via Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 357
  7. 2025Agentic Context Engineering: Evolving Contexts for Self-Improving Language Modelscited by 349
  8. 2025AgentSpec: Customizable Runtime Enforcement for Safe and Reliable LLM Agentscited by 196
  9. 2024EASYTOOL: Enhancing LLM-based Agents with Concise Tool Instructioncited by 153
  10. 2026Agentic Harness Engineering: Observability-Driven Automatic Evolution of Coding-Agent Harnessescited by 119
  11. 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)cited by 98
  12. 2025How Memory Management Impacts LLM Agents: An Empirical Study of Experience-Following Behaviorcited by 95
  13. 2025Agent KB: Leveraging Cross-Domain Experience for Agentic Problem Solvingcited by 90
  14. 2025Process Reward Models for LLM Agents: Practical Framework and Directionscited by 81
  15. 2025LifelongAgentBench: Evaluating LLM Agents as Lifelong Learnerscited by 65
  16. 2026Natural-Language Agent Harnessescited by 54
  17. 2025Training-Free Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 53

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.

8 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026BenchTrace: A Benchmark for Testing Reflection Ability and Controlled Evolution in LLM Agents
  2. 2026TTHE: Test-Time Harness Evolution
  3. 2026VERSE: Verified Self-Evolving Optimizer for Agent Harnesses
  4. 2026Rethinking the Evaluation of Harness Evolution for Agents
  5. 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfer
  6. 2026Adaptive Auto-Harness: Sustained Self-Improvement for Agentic System Deployment on Open-Ended Task Streams
  7. 2026Harness Updating Is Not Harness Benefit: Disentangling Evolution Capabilities in Self-Evolving LLM Agents
  8. 2026Self-Harness: Harnesses That Improve Themselves