# Selective Knowledge Control for Continual GUI Agent Learning over Application Streams

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06530 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06530/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 29 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [GUI and mobile agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/gui-and-mobile-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06070/) (2023)
- [OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07972/) (2024)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting with hard attention to the task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01423/) (2018)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10935/) (2024)
- [AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14573/) (2024)
- [Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05243/) (2024)
- [OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23218/) (2024)
- [Orthogonal Gradient Descent for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07104/) (2019)
- [A Real-World WebAgent with Planning, Long Context Understanding, and Program Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12856/) (2023)
- [Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04454/) (2024)
- [ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17465/) (2024)
- [Agent Q: Advanced Reasoning and Learning for Autonomous AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07199/) (2024)
- [Ferret-UI: Grounded Mobile UI Understanding with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05719/) (2024)
- [AgentTrek: Agent Trajectory Synthesis via Guiding Replay with Web Tutorials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09605/) (2024)
- [Learn-by-interact: A Data-Centric Framework for Self-Adaptive Agents in Realistic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10893/) (2025)
- [UI-Vision: A Desktop-centric GUI Benchmark for Visual Perception and Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15661/) (2025)
- [Synatra: Turning Indirect Knowledge into Direct Demonstrations for Digital Agents at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15637/) (2024)
- [TongUI: Internet-Scale Trajectories from Multimodal Web Tutorials for Generalized GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12679/) (2025)
- [Agent-Dice: Disentangling Knowledge Updates via Geometric Consensus for Agent Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03641/) (2026)
- [Autonomous Continual Learning for Environment Adaptation of Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10356/) (2026)
- [GUIDE: Resolving Domain Bias in GUI Agents through Real-Time Web Video Retrieval and Plug-and-Play Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26266/) (2026)
- [Interactive Reward Agent: GUI Task Evaluation via Environment-State Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25904/) (2026)
- [GUI-AC: Enhancing Continual Learning in GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10522/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Continual learning is a crucial capability for Graphical User Interface (GUI) agents to adapt to evolving applications while retaining knowledge acquired from previous applications. Such application streams pose a challenging knowledge modeling problem: new applications often share underlying knowledge with past ones, yet also introduce specific knowledge that must not interfere with historical knowledge. In this paper, we propose activation-conditioned selective knowledge control, a lightweight method that achieves selective knowledge retention via neuron-level gradient manipulation. Our method maintains a compact historical knowledge state to protect highly activated MLP neurons that preserve previous knowledge. When a new application arrives, it performs real-time gradient surgery conditioned on forward activation. Concretely, the protected neurons are categorized into two types: unactivated neurons holding specific knowledge, whose gradients are truncated to prevent interference; and activated neurons holding shared knowledge, whose gradients are orthogonally projected to preserve stability while enabling adaptation. After each application stage, newly identified critical neurons are merged into the historical state for future learning. Empirical evaluations on multi-app sequential benchmark demonstrate that our method effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting on prior applications while sustaining robust adaptation to new ones.