mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

EvolveNet: Collaborative Harness Evolution for Agent Self-Improvement

arXiv 2608.04968 ↗First posted 5 Aug 2026cs.LGcited by 4

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

An LLM agent can acquire persistent improvements by evolving its harness---the executable program governing model calls, tool use, verification, and recovery---without updating model weights. When the same harness serves users with different workloads, isolated evolution limits the sharing of useful discoveries, while centralized adaptation can introduce conflicting task-specific changes. We introduce EvolveNet, a framework for collaborative harness evolution that connects local specialization with shared capability accumulation. Clients evolve the same broadcast harness on their local workloads in parallel, and a server composes their adaptations into an updated shared program. Redistribution makes accepted discoveries available to all clients, allowing subsequent local evolution to build on improvements accumulated across the collaboration. EvolveNet supports this process through evidence-guided, scope-typed program aggregation and behavioral validation. Our theoretical analysis provides sufficient conditions for retaining and combining complementary improvements despite program interactions. Experiments across five settings show improved shared-harness performance, with ablation and behavioral analyses supporting the contribution of composition beyond specialist selection alone.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 27 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Aug 2026.

Builds on

27 of 31 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Self-Harness: Harnesses That Improve Themselves8 Jun
  2. 2024AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generation14 Oct
  3. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation16 Aug

Other references · 24

  1. 2016Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Datacited by 7,669
  2. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
  3. 2018Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networkscited by 2,987
  4. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 2,004
  5. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,784
  6. 2022Editing Models with Task Arithmeticcited by 1,120
  7. 2020Adaptive Federated Optimizationcited by 1,046
  8. 2022Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineerscited by 1,045
  9. 2023Large Language Models as Optimizerscited by 864
  10. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 832
  11. 2023TIES-Merging: Resolving Interference When Merging Modelscited by 818
  12. 2023Language Models are Super Mario: Absorbing Abilities from Homologous Models as a Free Lunchcited by 694
12 more
  1. 2023Can LLM Already Serve as A Database Interface? A BIg Bench for Large-Scale Database Grounded Text-to-SQLscited by 688
  2. 2023Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement Via Prompt Evolutioncited by 551
  3. 2022DS-1000: A Natural and Reliable Benchmark for Data Science Code Generationcited by 452
  4. 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systemscited by 407
  5. 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 356
  6. 2026Meta-Harness: End-to-End Optimization of Model Harnessescited by 309
  7. 2023Self-Taught Optimizer (STOP): Recursively Self-Improving Code Generationcited by 148
  8. 2025EvoTest: Evolutionary Test-Time Learning for Self-Improving Agentic Systemscited by 37
  9. 2026MOSS: Self-Evolution through Source-Level Rewriting in Autonomous Agent Systemscited by 13
  10. 2026FederatedSkill: Federated Learning for Agentic Skill Evolutioncited by 6
  11. 2025Fed-SE: Federated Self-Evolution for Privacy-Constrained Multi-Environment LLM Agentscited by 3
  12. 2026Federation over Text: Insight Sharing for Multi-Agent Reasoningcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Rethinking the Evaluation of Harness Evolution for Agents
  2. 2026DarwinX: Evolving Agent Harnesses Through Natural Selection
  3. 2026EvoHarnessBench: Can Your Agents Keep Pace with an Evolving Harness?
  4. 2026Adaptive Auto-Harness: Sustained Self-Improvement for Agentic System Deployment on Open-Ended Task Streams
  5. 2026Beyond Skill Evolution: Self-Evolving Context Management Policies for Long-Horizon Agent Harnesses
  6. 2026SEAGym: An Evaluation Environment for Self-Evolving LLM Agents
  7. 2026Evolve as a Team: Collaborative Self-Evolution for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems
  8. 2026HarnessForge: Joint Harness and Policy Evolution for Adaptive Agent Systems