Spark: Strategic Policy-Aware Exploration via Dynamic Branching for Long-Horizon Agentic Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Wu, Jinyang, Yang, Shuo, Yang, Changpeng, Shen, Yuhao, Zhang, Shuai, Wen, Zhengqi, Tao, Jianhua
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866911403993989120
author Wu, Jinyang
Yang, Shuo
Yang, Changpeng
Shen, Yuhao
Zhang, Shuai
Wen, Zhengqi
Tao, Jianhua
author_facet Wu, Jinyang
Yang, Shuo
Yang, Changpeng
Shen, Yuhao
Zhang, Shuai
Wen, Zhengqi
Tao, Jianhua
contents Reinforcement learning has empowered large language models to act as intelligent agents, yet training them for long-horizon tasks remains challenging due to the scarcity of high-quality trajectories, especially under limited resources. Existing methods typically scale up rollout sizes and indiscriminately allocate computational resources among intermediate steps. Such attempts inherently waste substantial computation budget on trivial steps while failing to guarantee sample quality. To address this, we propose \textbf{Spark} (\textbf{S}trategic \textbf{P}olicy-\textbf{A}ware explo\textbf{R}ation via \textbf{K}ey-state dynamic branching), a novel framework that selectively branches at critical decision states for resource-efficient exploration. Our key insight is to activate adaptive branching exploration at critical decision points to probe promising trajectories, thereby achieving precise resource allocation that prioritizes sampling quality over blind coverage. This design leverages the agent's intrinsic decision-making signals to reduce dependence on human priors, enabling the agent to autonomously expand exploration and achieve stronger generalization. Experiments across diverse tasks (e.g., embodied planning), demonstrate that \textsc{Spark} achieves superior success rates with significantly fewer training samples, exhibiting robust generalization even in unseen scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_20209
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spark: Strategic Policy-Aware Exploration via Dynamic Branching for Long-Horizon Agentic Learning
Wu, Jinyang
Yang, Shuo
Yang, Changpeng
Shen, Yuhao
Zhang, Shuai
Wen, Zhengqi
Tao, Jianhua
Machine Learning
Computation and Language
Reinforcement learning has empowered large language models to act as intelligent agents, yet training them for long-horizon tasks remains challenging due to the scarcity of high-quality trajectories, especially under limited resources. Existing methods typically scale up rollout sizes and indiscriminately allocate computational resources among intermediate steps. Such attempts inherently waste substantial computation budget on trivial steps while failing to guarantee sample quality. To address this, we propose \textbf{Spark} (\textbf{S}trategic \textbf{P}olicy-\textbf{A}ware explo\textbf{R}ation via \textbf{K}ey-state dynamic branching), a novel framework that selectively branches at critical decision states for resource-efficient exploration. Our key insight is to activate adaptive branching exploration at critical decision points to probe promising trajectories, thereby achieving precise resource allocation that prioritizes sampling quality over blind coverage. This design leverages the agent's intrinsic decision-making signals to reduce dependence on human priors, enabling the agent to autonomously expand exploration and achieve stronger generalization. Experiments across diverse tasks (e.g., embodied planning), demonstrate that \textsc{Spark} achieves superior success rates with significantly fewer training samples, exhibiting robust generalization even in unseen scenarios.
title Spark: Strategic Policy-Aware Exploration via Dynamic Branching for Long-Horizon Agentic Learning
topic Machine Learning
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20209