# OmniHarness: Harnessing Generalizable Visual Generation via Symbolic Policy Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16057 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16057/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 60 of its 73 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11513/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14683/) (2025)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06525/) (2024)
- [Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12528/) (2024)
- [MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10012/) (2023)
- [Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13848/) (2024)
- [Generative Multimodal Models are In-Context Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13286/) (2023)
- [Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17761/) (2025)
- [OmniGen: Unified Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11340/) (2024)
- [SEED-X: Multimodal Models with Unified Multi-granularity Comprehension and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14396/) (2024)
- [VILA-U: a Unified Foundation Model Integrating Visual Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04429/) (2024)
- [Playground v2.5: Three Insights towards Enhancing Aesthetic Quality in Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17245/) (2024)
- [Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15564/) (2025)
- [AnyEdit: Mastering Unified High-Quality Image Editing for Any Idea](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15738/) (2024)
- [WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07265/) (2025)
- [World Model on Million-Length Video And Language With Blockwise RingAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08268/) (2024)
- [SmartEdit: Exploring Complex Instruction-based Image Editing with Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06739/) (2023)
- [InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03895/) (2023)

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

- [RoboRSI: Stable, efficient, and reusable robot self-evolution in complex real-world environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12424/) (2026)
- [MaLiang-Harness: A Programmable Path to Image and Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34309/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unified multimodal large language models (MLLMs) and multi-agent systems have advanced visual generation. However, three limitations remain. (1) Existing methods often distill task-specific experience with limited generalizability. (2) Reflection is often deferred until task completion. (3) Knowledge is often acquired only in response to downstream task demands. To address these limitations, we introduce OmniHarness, a framework for generalizable visual generation via symbolic policy learning. OmniHarness abstracts verified executions into symbolic policies for visual generation task families, capturing shared procedures and applicability conditions while removing instance-specific inputs. The harness instantiates, adapts, and composes these policies for new tasks. Intermediate verification guides refinement and failure recovery during execution. Through self-directed inquiry, OmniHarness autonomously generates and executes practice tasks near its capability limits before downstream objectives are specified. Execution feedback continually refines the policies while model parameters remain fixed. Experiments across six benchmarks, three MLLM backbones, and three visual agent frameworks demonstrate strong performance and continual capability expansion. On ComfyBench's Creative tasks, OmniHarness achieves a 95.0% resolve rate, exceeding the strongest baseline by 27.5 percentage points. Frozen policy snapshots improve existing visual agent systems through plug-and-play reuse.