mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

EAU: Environment-Agent-User Co-evolution for Training User-Centric Agents

arXiv 2610.16523 ↗First posted 12 Oct 2026cs.AI cs.CL cs.LGcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Reinforcement learning for LLM agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Training LLM agents to interact with users over multiple turns is challenging because the learning signal depends not only on the agent, but also on the user simulator and environment, which jointly shape the agent's experience. Simulated users can be stochastic or inconsistent, while environments may contain unreliable tools, incomplete state coverage, and incorrect verifiers. Prior work mainly addresses the resulting instability through reward shaping or denser supervision, while treating these components as fixed. We instead introduce EAU, a meta-agent framework for environment--agent--user co-evolution. During training, EAU monitors trajectories, tool traces, rewards, and training statistics; diagnoses failures and uninformative interactions; and proposes targeted modifications to the user simulator, environment, reward design, and RL configuration. Validated changes are hot-swapped into the ongoing run, allowing the training setup to evolve together with the policy. These adaptations also persist across runs, so later training can build on previously discovered improvements rather than restarting from a fixed setup. We enable this process through an editable symbolic representation of user and environment dynamics, while the agent remains a neural LLM optimized with RL. Across three interactive-agent benchmarks and two backbone models, EAU consistently outperforms prior RL methods, improving the overall score over the strongest baseline by 14.7--15.0% and increasing successful task completion on ColBench by up to 36.7%, showing that co-evolving the training system with the policy can substantially improve multi-turn RL.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for LLM agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 34 of its 38 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2026.

Builds on

34 of 38 references.

Closest ancestors · 13

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026One Frozen Simulator Is Not Enough: Simulator Collapse in Multi-Agent RL12 Aug
  2. 2026Single-Rollout Asynchronous Optimization for Agentic Reinforcement Learning8 Jul
  3. 2026EvoTrainer: Co-Evolving LLM Policies and Training Harnesses for Autonomous Agentic Reinforcement Learning2 Jun
  4. 2026CoEvolve: Training LLM Agents via Agent-Data Mutual Evolution17 Apr
  5. 2026From AI Assistant to AI Scientist: Autonomous Discovery of LLM-RL Algorithms with LLM Agents25 Mar
  6. 2026InfoPO: Information-Driven Policy Optimization for User-Centric Agents28 Feb
  7. 2026CM2: Reinforcement Learning with Checklist Rewards for Multi-Turn and Multi-Step Agentic Tool Use12 Feb
  8. 2025Information Gain-based Policy Optimization: A Simple and Effective Approach for Multi-Turn Search Agents16 Oct
  9. 2025UserRL: Training Interactive User-Centric Agent via Reinforcement Learning24 Sep
  10. 2025Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Training16 May
  11. 2025RAGEN: Understanding Self-Evolution in LLM Agents via Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning24 Apr
  12. 2025SWEET-RL: Training Multi-Turn LLM Agents on Collaborative Reasoning Tasks19 Mar
1 more
  1. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning20 Mar

Other references · 21

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  3. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
  4. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  5. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
  6. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,444
  7. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,402
  8. 2025τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environmentcited by 627
  9. 2025The AI Scientist-v2: Workshop-Level Automated Scientific Discovery via Agentic Tree Searchcited by 422
  10. 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systemscited by 407
  11. 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 356
  12. 2026Meta-Harness: End-to-End Optimization of Model Harnessescited by 309
9 more
  1. 2025UserBench: An Interactive Gym Environment for User-Centric Agentscited by 76
  2. 2024Large Language Model Agent for Hyper-Parameter Optimizationcited by 64
  3. 2026Mind the Sim2Real Gap in User Simulation for Agentic Taskscited by 54
  4. 2025Algorithm Discovery With LLMs: Evolutionary Search Meets Reinforcement Learningcited by 46
  5. 2026ScaleEnv: Scaling Environment Synthesis from Scratch for Generalist Interactive Tool-Use Agent Trainingcited by 32
  6. 2026Adaptive Auto-Harness: Sustained Self-Improvement for Agentic System Deployment on Open-Ended Task Streamscited by 27
  7. 2026Claudini: Autoresearch Discovers State-of-the-Art Adversarial Attack Algorithms for LLMscited by 17
  8. 2026Can LLMs Beat Classical Hyperparameter Optimization Algorithms? A Study on autoresearchcited by 15
  9. 2026FrogNano: Training a 4B Coding Agent via Online Task Synthesiscited by 4

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  3. 2026UserProxyBench: Evaluating LLM User Simulators for Agent Benchmarks and Training
  4. 2026Echoverse: Deep, Evolving Environments for Training Computer-Use Agents at Scale
  5. 2025AutoEnv: Automated Environments for Measuring Cross-Environment Agent Learning
  6. 2026Unified Context Evolution for LLM Agents
  7. 2026TRACE: A Self-Evolving Skill Bank for Consistent, Limit-Aware LLM Agents
  8. 2025GenEnv: Difficulty-Aligned Co-Evolution Between LLM Agents and Environment Simulators