# Coalition-Aware Skill Reliability for Self-Evolving Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.22610 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22610/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 38 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent skill learning and evolution](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-skill-learning-and-evolution/)
- Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs / [Self-evolving LLM agents](https://mlsanity.com/synth/self-evolving-llm-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03768/) (2020)
- [A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12110/) (2025)
- [ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10144/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17753/) (2024)
- [LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10813/) (2024)
- [The many Shapley values for model explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08474/) (2019)
- [SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12670/) (2026)
- [ReasoningBank: Scaling Agent Self-Evolving with Reasoning Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25140/) (2025)
- [SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08234/) (2026)
- [Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25158/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Note: Enhancing Robustness in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09210/) (2023)
- [A Human-Inspired Reading Agent with Gist Memory of Very Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09727/) (2024)
- [MemSkill: Learning and Evolving Memory Skills for Self-Evolving Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02474/) (2026)
- [Evo-Memory: Benchmarking LLM Agent Test-time Learning with Self-Evolving Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20857/) (2025)
- [CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01687/) (2026)
- [MemGen: Weaving Generative Latent Memory for Self-Evolving Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24704/) (2025)
- [Reinforcement Learning for Self-Improving Agent with Skill Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17102/) (2025)
- [SKILL0: In-Context Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Skill Internalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02268/) (2026)
- [Organizing, Orchestrating, and Benchmarking Agent Skills at Ecosystem Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02176/) (2026)
- [SkillNet: Create, Evaluate, and Connect AI Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04448/) (2026)
- [A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12538/) (2026)
- [Skill Retrieval Augmentation for Agentic AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24594/) (2026)
- [SKILLFOUNDRY: Building Self-Evolving Agent Skill Libraries from Heterogeneous Scientific Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03964/) (2026)
- [Dynamic Dual-Granularity Skill Bank for Agentic RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28716/) (2026)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Cortex: Measurement-Gated Evolution and Pruning of Coding-Agent Skills and Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14216/) (2026)
- [Reliable Memory from Unstable Growth: Curating Self-Written Agent Playbooks with Randomized Experiments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18427/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agent skills, structured artifacts distilled from interaction trajectories and dynamically reused from skill banks, have become a central mechanism for enabling large language model (LLM)-based self-evolving agents to learn from past experience. Yet existing work has largely focused on the operational aspects of skills, such as acquisition, evolution, and retrieval, while leaving a more fundamental reliability question unresolved: Do accumulated skills in an agent's skill bank actually make positive mechanistic contributions? We investigate this question through systematic skill-bank audits across alternative bank compositions and deployment domains, measuring the resulting changes in agent behavior. These audits reveal two recurring reliability failures: coalition pollution, where bank-level gains conceal negative coalition-level skill contributions, and cross-domain utility reversal, where source-beneficial skills reverse their effects after transfer. These findings motivate two reliability interventions: coalition-aware skill selection during skill accumulation and label-free skill masking after transfer. Coalition-Aware Skill Selection (CASS) selects more reliable candidate skills for the current bank using sampled Shapley marginals. Unsupervised Skill-Masked Coalition Optimizer (u-SMCO) masks transferred skills whose exclusion improves retrieval quality on unlabeled target-domain data. Agentic experiments on LoCoMo, LongMemEval, HotpotQA, and ALFWorld show that CASS and u-SMCO consistently improve task performance and cross-domain generalization over strong skill-based self-evolving agent baselines. Beyond accuracy, coalition-conditioned reliability modeling reduces sensitivity to noisy outcome-reward fluctuations during reinforcement learning and exposes the limits of isolation-based skill evaluation.