Mixture of Self-Improving Branches For Agent Harness Optimization
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Abstract (arXiv)
Harness optimization provides a practical setting for recursive self-improvement (RSI), where agent-generated modifications inform subsequent changes through execution feedback. Recent work such as Meta-Harness implements this process through iterative code generation and evaluation, but retains a fixed development set and proposal policy. These constraints channel evolution along a single search trajectory, increasing the risk of converging to a local optimum. We make the improvement process itself adaptive by organizing search into branches with evolving development subsets and proposal policies. Each branch retains development cases solved by more of its leading harnesses than by those of other branches, drops cases solved by every leading harness across all branches, and revises its proposal policy using its own search history. To deploy the resulting complementary harnesses, we propose a router to select one development-selected branch head for each new input before execution. Across mathematical reasoning and agentic coding benchmarks, our system achieves relative improvements over Meta-Harness of 34.8% on Olympiad-level mathematical reasoning, 11.6% on Terminal-Bench 2.0, and 3.8% on SWE-bench Lite, with harness selection and router configuration based solely on development data. These results show that evolving branch objectives and proposal policies can yield complementary harnesses whose strengths a router combines without access to test outcomes.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 32 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2026.
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References · 32
- 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
- 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
- 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineeringcited by 1,628
- 2023Large Language Models as Optimizerscited by 830
- 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 803
- 2023FrugalGPT: How to Use Large Language Models While Reducing Cost and Improving Performancecited by 791
- 2025AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discoverycited by 763
- 2024RouteLLM: Learning to Route LLMs with Preference Datacited by 633
- 2023Automatic Prompt Optimization with "Gradient Descent" and Beam Searchcited by 628
- 2026Terminal-Bench: Benchmarking Agents on Hard, Realistic Tasks in Command Line Interfacescited by 515
20 more
- 2025GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learningcited by 449
- 2015Illuminating search spaces by mapping elitescited by 406
- 2024AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generationcited by 395
- 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systemscited by 360
- 2024TextGrad: Automatic "Differentiation" via Textcited by 250
- 2026Meta-Harness: End-to-End Optimization of Model Harnessescited by 248
- 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 122
- 2026Self-Harness: Harnesses That Improve Themselvescited by 79
- 2026Rethinking the Evaluation of Harness Evolution for Agentscited by 39
- 2026Continual Harness: Online Adaptation for Self-Improving Foundation Agentscited by 30
- 2026HarnessForge: Joint Harness and Policy Evolution for Adaptive Agent Systemscited by 20
- 2026Co-Harness: Co-Evolving Harnesses and Model Weights for LLM Agentscited by 16
- 2026Token-Level LLM Collaboration via FusionRoutecited by 9
- 2026HARBOR: Automated Harness Optimizationcited by 9
- 2026AgenticGEO: A Self-Evolving Agentic System for Generative Engine Optimizationcited by 6
- 2026Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Systems via Decentralized Memorycited by 6
- 2026AutoDesign: Meta-Harness Optimization for Long-Horizon Agentic Designcited by 5
- 2026DREvo: Distilling Recalibrated Historical Experience for Harness Self-Evolutioncited by 4
- 2025S'MoRE: Structural Mixture of Residual Experts for Parameter-Efficient LLM Fine-tuningcited by 3
- 2026DAG-MoE: From Simple Mixture to Structural Aggregation in Mixture-of-Expertscited by 3
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- 2026ModularRSI: Modular and Generalizable Recursive Harness Self-Improvement
- 2026Causal Improvement Graph for Agentic Harness Optimization
- 2026Recursive Harness Self-Improvement
- 2026RRSI: Regularized Recursive Self-Improvement of Agent Harnesses
- 2026PluginRSI: Recursive Improvement of Agent Harnesses with Reusable Plugins
- 2026SoL-Pi: Recursively Scaling Auto-Research Loops for Efficient Agent Harness
- 2026MESH-Harness: Self-Improving Agent Harnesses via Bandit-Guided Compositional Evolution
- 2026HarnessOpt-Bench: Evaluating LLMs at Harness Optimization