# SkillSmith: Learning to Compose Parametric Skills and Textual Knowledge

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27497 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27497/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 35 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent skill learning and evolution](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-skill-learning-and-evolution/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00190/) (2021)
- [The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08691/) (2021)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Editing Models with Task Arithmetic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04089/) (2022)
- [A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12110/) (2025)
- [Towards a Unified View of Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04366/) (2021)
- [Super-NaturalInstructions: Generalization via Declarative Instructions on 1600+ NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07705/) (2022)
- [Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19413/) (2025)
- [Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Large Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14608/) (2024)
- [GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19457/) (2025)
- [Faith and Fate: Limits of Transformers on Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18654/) (2023)
- [AdapterHub: A Framework for Adapting Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07779/) (2020)
- [Agentic Context Engineering: Evolving Contexts for Self-Improving Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04618/) (2025)
- [LoraHub: Efficient Cross-Task Generalization via Dynamic LoRA Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13269/) (2023)
- [Measuring Compositional Generalization: A Comprehensive Method on Realistic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.09713/) (2019)
- [SPoT: Better Frozen Model Adaptation through Soft Prompt Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07904/) (2021)
- [PromptAgent: Strategic Planning with Language Models Enables Expert-level Prompt Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16427/) (2023)
- [Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14499/) (2025)
- [Memento: Fine-tuning LLM Agents without Fine-tuning LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16153/) (2025)
- [Gemini Embedding: Generalizable Embeddings from Gemini](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07891/) (2025)
- [ATTEMPT: Parameter-Efficient Multi-task Tuning via Attentional Mixtures of Soft Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11961/) (2022)
- [Winning Gold at IMO 2025 with a Model-Agnostic Verification-and-Refinement Pipeline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15855/) (2025)
- [MMLU-ProX: A Multilingual Benchmark for Advanced Large Language Model Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10497/) (2025)
- [Conditional Adapters: Parameter-efficient Transfer Learning with Fast Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04947/) (2023)
- [Merging LoRAs like Playing LEGO: Pushing the Modularity of LoRA to Extremes Through Rank-Wise Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16167/) (2024)
- [LoRA Soups: Merging LoRAs for Practical Skill Composition Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13025/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agentic systems driven by large language models (LLMs) regularly feature two key mechanisms to autonomously solve complex problems: synthesizing text-based knowledge and procedures from past experiences and building parametric (weight-space) skill libraries for recurring sub-goals. To date, research has largely treated these as orthogonal pursuits: either organizing textual knowledge through composition and reflection, or consolidating parametric skills via weight-space merging. Consequently, the seamless integration of text and model weights for targeted performance improvements remains largely unexplored. This work bridges this modality gap by treating model weights as an additional modality that an LLM can natively reason over. We instantiate parametric learning via prefix-tuning and augment an LLM to ingest both prefix weights and rich textual data which capture relationships to a target capability. Our augmented LLM, which we call SkillSmith, synthesizes these inputs to perform instruction-steered parametric synthesis, directly outputting new prefix weights that manifest the target skill. We demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms both text-only and weight-space-only baselines, unlocking performance gains that are out of reach for uni-modal (text-only or weight-only) adaptations.