构建可控任务流评估语言智能体持续学习能力,发现现有方法易失效。
AgentCL: Toward Rigorous Evaluation of Continual Learning in Language Agents

- 设计可控任务流,让早期经验可被后期复用,验证学习效果。
- 在编码、研究与语言理解任务中,控制流比随机流更有效区分记忆设计差异。
- 提出内存探针法,过滤无效经验,提升长期学习稳定性,适合长期优化研究者。
语言智能体在解决单个任务时需消耗大量推理时间,但前序任务的经验常未被后续任务充分利用。持续学习旨在让智能体在任务流中积累可复用经验,持续改进并避免无关干扰。然而,现有基准难以严格评估语言智能体的持续学习表现:多数工作聚焦长上下文检索与推理,而近期终身适应基准多依赖简单任务流,缺乏对跨任务关系的深入分析,导致难以判断智能体实际学到了什么。本文提出评估框架 AgentCL,以受控任务流和迁移增益度量为核心。该框架构造组合式任务流,确保早期子解、证据或工作流可被后续任务复用,并与无保证复用性的朴素流对比。利用该基准评估非参数化记忆设计。为诊断记忆设计的影响,开发了 MemProbe 探针方法,存储交互、洞察与技能,并在整合过程中过滤不可靠经验。在编码、深度研究与语言理解/推理任务上的实证分析显示,朴素流难以区分不同记忆设计,而受控流能更清晰揭示其可塑性差异。同时,朴素与保留设置常带来有限收益,且可能暴露记忆引发的性能退化。结果凸显出需更强的记忆设计,在可塑性与稳定复用间取得平衡。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Language agents spend substantial inference time solving individual tasks, yet the experience acquired in one episode is often underutilized in future episodes. Continual learning expects an agent to accumulate reusable experience across a stream of tasks, improve over time, and avoid interference from irrelevant experiences. Unfortunately, existing benchmarks struggle to evaluate continual learning in language agents rigorously. Most efforts focus on retrieval and reasoning over long-context conversations or documents, while recent lifelong-adaptation benchmarks often rely on naive task streams with limited analysis of cross-task relationships, making it difficult to understand what an agent learns and reuses over time. This paper presents an evaluation framework AgentCL for continual learning in agents, centered on controlled task streams and metrics for transfer gains. AgentCL constructs compositional streams where earlier sub-solutions, evidence, or workflows are intentionally reusable in later tasks, and contrasts them with naive streams where such reusability is not guaranteed. We use the benchmark to evaluate non-parametric memory designs for continual learning. To diagnose how memory design choices affect continual learning, we develop MemProbe, a probing method that stores interactions, insights, and skills, while filtering unreliable experiences during consolidation. Empirical analysis across coding, deep research, and language understanding/reasoning tasks shows that naive streams offer limited ability to distinguish memory designs, whereas controlled streams more clearly distinguish their plasticity. Meanwhile, naive and held-out settings often yield limited gains and can expose memory-induced degradation. These results highlight the need for stronger memory designs that balance plasticity and stable reuse.
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