mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedback

arXiv 2608.13120 ↗First posted 13 Aug 2026cs.AIcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

Agent Skills are today either hand-authored or produced in a single LLM generation pass, and consequently possess no closed loop through which they might improve from the interaction failures they actually cause. Recent work does close this loop, but derives its feedback from single-turn question-answering evaluation. The consequence is a sharp asymmetry: once the first round has patched the gaps that a single exchange can reveal, the evolution gradient decays, the defects that surface only across multiple turns remain invisible, and evolution stalls. Governance in these systems is likewise driven by an end-to-end verification score, a scalar gate that can reject a degraded candidate but can neither localize nor repair its structural cause. We argue that the binding constraint on sustained skill evolution is neither editing capability nor the number of iterations, but whether the evaluation feedback keeps supplying trustworthy evolution gradients. We introduce SkillEvo, in which trustworthy feedback generates the gradient and controllable governance constrains its direction. The first component recasts multi-turn user simulation from an evaluation endpoint into a feedback generator: follow-up questions expose defects layer by layer, so that every round of revision both consumes feedback and produces new feedback. The second replaces the passive rejection of a scalar gate with an independent governance layer that actively repairs factual degradation and structural bloat, preventing the gradient from drifting as degradation accumulates. Across six categories of cloud services, 9 production Skills, and 98 skill-reference files, SkillEvo surpasses self-reflection-based evolution by 23.0 points and single- turn-QA-driven evolution by 15.4 points.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 29 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Aug 2026.

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29 of 59 references.

References · 29

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  3. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  4. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  5. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,280
  6. 2025GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learningcited by 449
  7. 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Taskscited by 289
  8. 2024TextGrad: Automatic "Differentiation" via Textcited by 250
  9. 2025Which Agent Causes Task Failures and When? On Automated Failure Attribution of LLM Multi-Agent Systemscited by 170
  10. 2026Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skillscited by 161
  11. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
  12. 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 122
17 more
  1. 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agentscited by 120
  2. 2026CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verificationcited by 117
  3. 2026EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 96
  4. 2023Automatic Root Cause Analysis via Large Language Models for Cloud Incidentscited by 82
  5. 2026SkillX: Automatically Constructing Skill Knowledge Bases for Agentscited by 69
  6. 2026Organizing, Orchestrating, and Benchmarking Agent Skills at Ecosystem Scalecited by 65
  7. 2023RCAgent: Cloud Root Cause Analysis by Autonomous Agents with Tool-Augmented Large Language Modelscited by 62
  8. 2026SkillOS: Learning Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 45
  9. 2026SkillForge: Forging Domain-Specific, Self-Evolving Agent Skills in Cloud Technical Supportcited by 43
  10. 2026SKILLFOUNDRY: Building Self-Evolving Agent Skill Libraries from Heterogeneous Scientific Resourcescited by 38
  11. 2023D-Bot: Database Diagnosis System using Large Language Modelscited by 28
  12. 2025ECom-Bench: Can LLM Agent Resolve Real-World E-commerce Customer Support Issues?cited by 27
  13. 2025Agent-in-the-Loop: A Data Flywheel for Continuous Improvement in LLM-based Customer Supportcited by 10
  14. 2025Audited Skill-Graph Self-Improvement for Agentic LLMs via Verifiable Rewards, Experience Synthesis, and Continual Memorycited by 8
  15. 2025SAGE: A Top-Down Bottom-Up Knowledge-Grounded User Simulator for Multi-turn AGent Evaluationcited by 6
  16. 2026SEAD: Self-Evolving Agent for Multi-Turn Service Dialoguecited by 6
  17. 2025VoiceAgentEval: A Dual-Dimensional Benchmark for Expert-Level Intelligent Voice-Agent Evaluation of Xbench's Professional-Aligned Seriescited by 4

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