SkillSandbox: Skill Verification via Dynamic Scenario Synthesis
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Abstract (arXiv)
Self-evolving agents distill task-solving experience into skills for future reuse, but these skills can encode incorrect procedures or non-transferable knowledge. It is therefore critical to verify each skill's reusability: whether its guidance remains useful beyond the experience from which it was distilled. Such verification requires observing how a skill affects execution in new tasks, yet existing tasks may not expose the situations where the target skill can actually be exercised. To construct such situations, we propose SkillSandbox, a framework that dynamically synthesizes a task and its environment for each skill that are skill-relevant yet novel. A Proposer specifies the conditions to preserve and the source-specific details to vary, a Builder constructs an executable scenario, and a Verifier compares executions with and without the skill. The Verifier assesses executability, utility, and efficiency to assign a Keep or Reject verdict, determining whether the skill enters the library. Across ALFWorld and WebShop with three models, SkillSandbox consistently yields the strongest downstream performance and improved execution efficiency. Further analyses examine whether these gains reflect accurate assessment of skill reusability and identify which components of SkillSandbox contribute to them.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 18 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Oct 2026.
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18 of 40 references.
References · 18
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
- 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,143
- 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Taskscited by 289
- 2026SkillRL: Evolving Agents via Recursive Skill-Augmented Reinforcement Learningcited by 252
- 2026Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skillscited by 161
- 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
- 2025Inducing Programmatic Skills for Agentic Taskscited by 103
- 2026SWE-Skills-Bench: Do Agent Skills Actually Help in Real-World Software Engineering?cited by 72
- 2026SkillOS: Learning Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agentscited by 45
- 2024EnvGen: Generating and Adapting Environments via LLMs for Training Embodied Agentscited by 41
- 2025GenEnv: Difficulty-Aligned Co-Evolution Between LLM Agents and Environment Simulatorscited by 34
6 more
- 2026SkillGen: Verified Inference-Time Agent Skill Synthesiscited by 29
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revisioncited by 21
- 2026SkillAxe: Sharpening LLM-Authored Agent Skills Through Evaluation-Guided Self-Refinementcited by 11
- 2026Safe and Scalable Web Agent Learning via Recreated Websitescited by 9
- 2026SkillCAT: Contrastive, Assessment-Augmented and Topology-AwareSkill Self-Evolution for LLM Agentscited by 5
- 2026Agent Skills Can Be Harmful: An Empirical Study of Skill-Induced Failures in LLM Agentscited by 3
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