Long-horizon autonomous research tasks such as machine learning engineering require systems to make interdependent decisions under a limited budget. Existing LLM-based agents typically organize candidate-solution improvement through tree, graph, or chain structures, meaning that the search process determines how information is acquired and managed. We call this design solution-centric search and propose instead the information paradigm, in which an evolving information state represents the system's understanding of the task and guides solution improvement. We instantiate this paradigm in Iris, an inquiry-revision loop. For information acquisition, Iris generates local action plans from the current information state and uses epistemic actions to probe decision-critical unknowns without modifying the retained solution. For information management, Iris synthesizes observations across experiments into task knowledge composed of revisable claims with explicit scope and status. It updates this knowledge as new evidence arrives and constructs each decision context from raw evidence, structured summaries, or task knowledge at the required level of detail. On MLE-Bench, Iris attains a 64.9% any-medal rate under a 12-hour budget, the highest among compared systems. Across four tasks spanning harness engineering and model post-training, Iris also demonstrates cross-domain generalization.
Shaokang Fu, Yulong Tao, Linbo Jin et al.· 1 citation
Autonomous multi-modal agents are increasingly important in real-world applications due to their ability to reason about complex environments and orchestrate tool use. However, deploying multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) for tool use is often constrained by computational cost and inference latency, creating a pressing need for compact models that retain strong agentic capabilities. Training small multi-modal agents remains difficult: limited backbone capacity weakens multi-step reasoning, reward signals for tool use are often sparse and brittle, and naive distillation can fail to transfer the procedural knowledge required for reliable tool invocation and grounding. In this paper, we propose a two-stage self-evolutionary knowledge distillation framework that equips small MLLMs with robust and adaptive tool-use behaviors. Our method combines (i) mutual information-guided trajectory distillation, which selectively transfers high-utility segments of agentic trajectories from a larger teacher, and (ii) reinforcement-driven policy evolution with iterative teacher feedback. To stabilize learning and prevent semantic collapse, we introduce weighted semantic objectives and iteratively expand competence through error-driven optimization, hybrid experience replay, and group-relative policy refinement with multi-dimensional rewards over answer correctness, invocation validity, and tool effectiveness. Integrated with interactive tool modules, our approach enables small models to achieve strong performance across diverse tool-use benchmarks. Comprehensive experiments show consistent improvements over single-pass distillation and RL baselines. Overall, our framework provides a practical path to deploy efficient multi-modal agents without sacrificing tool-use reliability.
Lei Shen, Chengyu Wang, Yuanjie Lyu et al.· Proceedings of the 32nd ACM...· 0 citations
Autonomous multi-modal agents are increasingly important in real-world applications due to their ability to reason about complex environments and orchestrate tool use. However, deploying multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) for tool use is often constrained by computational cost and inference latency, creating a pressing need for compact models that retain strong agentic capabilities. Training small multi-modal agents remains difficult: limited backbone capacity weakens multi-step reasoning, reward signals for tool use are often sparse and brittle, and naive distillation can fail to transfer the procedural knowledge required for reliable tool invocation and grounding. In this paper, we propose a two-stage self-evolutionary knowledge distillation framework that equips small MLLMs with robust and adaptive tool-use behaviors. Our method combines (i) mutual information-guided trajectory distillation, which selectively transfers high-utility segments of agentic trajectories from a larger teacher, and (ii) reinforcement-driven policy evolution with iterative teacher feedback. To stabilize learning and prevent semantic collapse, we introduce weighted semantic objectives and iteratively expand competence through error-driven optimization, hybrid experience replay, and group-relative policy refinement with multi-dimensional rewards over answer correctness, invocation validity, and tool effectiveness. Integrated with interactive tool modules, our approach enables small models to achieve strong performance across diverse tool-use benchmarks. Comprehensive experiments show consistent improvements over single-pass distillation and RL baselines. Overall, our framework provides a practical path to deploy efficient multi-modal agents without sacrificing tool-use reliability.
Lei Shen, Chengyu Wang, Yuanjie Lyu et al.· Proceedings of the 32nd ACM...· 0 citations
Large language model agents are increasingly evaluated as autonomous tool users, yet most benchmarks focus on bounded tasks with immediate success criteria. Real-world deployments often require Long-Term Coherence, the capacity to preserve purposeful behavior across extended horizons while adapting decisions to accumulated evidence. Evaluating this capacity requires a persistent environment in which actions constrain future choices, feedback arrives at heterogeneous delays, and incoherent behavior produces measurable cumulative effects. Seller-side e-commerce provides a suitable setting for this evaluation through recurrent and interdependent decisions over Product Sourcing, Listing and Pricing Control, Cash-Flow Management, and Mixed-Latency Feedback Adaptation. We introduce MerchantBench, a 365-day order-level simulation grounded in 98,843 real e-commerce product records and equipped with 26 tools for agent interaction. MerchantBench couples promptly observable Upstream Supplier Events with delayed Downstream Order Outcomes, requiring agents to follow individual order lifecycles and revisit earlier decisions. We evaluate eight LLMs under two agent frameworks in 48 runs, each spanning 365 simulated days. Our results reveal a substantial gap between even the latest LLMs and human participants, with the best LLM configuration attaining only 27.3\% of the mean final net assets achieved by human participants.
Qi-Ming Shi, Yulong Tao, Linbo Jin et al.· arXiv.org· 1 citation
This work proposes BCSD (Bidirectional Context Self-Distillation), a framework that combines self-distillation with reinforcement learning to train LLM agents to use external skills more effectively, enabling agents to utilize external skills more effectively.
Tian Pan, Yuan Li, Hongda Wang et al.· 0 citations
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