ATLaS: Agent Tuning via Learning Critical Steps

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Chen, Zhixun, Li, Ming, Huang, Yuxuan, Du, Yali, Fang, Meng, Zhou, Tianyi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Chen, Zhixun
Li, Ming
Huang, Yuxuan
Du, Yali
Fang, Meng
Zhou, Tianyi
author_facet Chen, Zhixun
Li, Ming
Huang, Yuxuan
Du, Yali
Fang, Meng
Zhou, Tianyi
contents Large Language Model (LLM) agents have demonstrated remarkable generalization capabilities across multi-domain tasks. Existing agent tuning approaches typically employ supervised finetuning on entire expert trajectories. However, behavior-cloning of full trajectories can introduce expert bias and weaken generalization to states not covered by the expert data. Additionally, critical steps, such as planning, complex reasoning for intermediate subtasks, and strategic decision-making, are essential to success in agent tasks, so learning these steps is the key to improving LLM agents. For more effective and efficient agent tuning, we propose ATLaS that identifies the critical steps in expert trajectories and finetunes LLMs solely on these steps with reduced costs. By steering the training's focus to a few critical steps, our method mitigates the risk of overfitting entire trajectories and promotes generalization across different environments and tasks. In extensive experiments, an LLM finetuned on only 30% critical steps selected by ATLaS outperforms the LLM finetuned on all steps and recent open-source LLM agents. ATLaS maintains and improves base LLM skills as generalist agents interacting with diverse environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_02197
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ATLaS: Agent Tuning via Learning Critical Steps
Chen, Zhixun
Li, Ming
Huang, Yuxuan
Du, Yali
Fang, Meng
Zhou, Tianyi
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Large Language Model (LLM) agents have demonstrated remarkable generalization capabilities across multi-domain tasks. Existing agent tuning approaches typically employ supervised finetuning on entire expert trajectories. However, behavior-cloning of full trajectories can introduce expert bias and weaken generalization to states not covered by the expert data. Additionally, critical steps, such as planning, complex reasoning for intermediate subtasks, and strategic decision-making, are essential to success in agent tasks, so learning these steps is the key to improving LLM agents. For more effective and efficient agent tuning, we propose ATLaS that identifies the critical steps in expert trajectories and finetunes LLMs solely on these steps with reduced costs. By steering the training's focus to a few critical steps, our method mitigates the risk of overfitting entire trajectories and promotes generalization across different environments and tasks. In extensive experiments, an LLM finetuned on only 30% critical steps selected by ATLaS outperforms the LLM finetuned on all steps and recent open-source LLM agents. ATLaS maintains and improves base LLM skills as generalist agents interacting with diverse environments.
title ATLaS: Agent Tuning via Learning Critical Steps
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02197