arXiv:2608.07885cs.AI2026-08

用少量轨迹提炼通用技能,让非推理模型高效完成复杂任务

Reason Wide, Not Deep: Amortizing the Reasoning Premium into Distilled Skills

论文配图:Reason Wide, Not Deep: Amortizing the Reasoning Premium into Distilled Skills
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 从历史任务中提取共性步骤,生成可复用的自然语言技能注入模型
  • 在4个基准上恢复GPT-5.4-mini推理模式80%以上性能,耗时减少6倍
  • 无需推理轨迹即可训练,适合资源有限但需高效决策的场景

语言模型的推理模式在多步代理任务中表现更优,但每次任务输出量增加3-6倍,其中大量内容为重复推导。本文发现:同一领域内任务的共性步骤可被压缩为精炼的自然语言技能,注入非推理模型系统提示中,实现成本分摊。在四个代理基准(ALFWorld、tau²-bench电信与零售、SpreadsheetBench-Verified)上,该方法使GPT-5.4-mini在未见任务中恢复55%-100%以上的推理性能,甚至在两个任务上超越推理模式,同时输出令牌减少2.7-6倍,且无需生成任何推理令牌。值得注意的是,仅使用非推理轨迹也能提炼出竞争力强的技能,与使用配对推理/非推理数据相比,效果因领域而异。研究从搜索视角解释:推理是每部署一次都重新深搜,而知识蒸馏是跨任务广搜,只需支付一次成本。两者覆盖重叠的程序知识,而基于廉价轨迹的广搜通常性价比更高;部分领域(如电信、表格任务)仍需深度搜索以填补残余差距。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reasoning modes of language models outperform their non-reasoning counterparts on multi-step agentic tasks, but pay a 3-6x premium in output tokens on every episode -- much of it spent re-deriving procedures that are shared across episodes of the same domain. We show this recurring cost can be amortized: a coding agent analyses a small corpus of existing trajectories from a training split and compiles a compact natural-language skill that is injected into the non-reasoning model's system prompt. Across four agentic benchmarks (ALFWorld, tau$^2$-bench telecom and retail, and SpreadsheetBench-Verified), skills recover 55%-100%+ of the reasoning gap for GPT-5.4-mini on held-out tasks -- exceeding the reasoning mode outright on two of four -- while emitting 2.7-6x fewer output tokens and zero reasoning tokens. Notably, reasoning traces are not a prerequisite: skills distilled from non-reasoning trajectories alone remain competitive with skills distilled from paired reasoning/non-reasoning corpora, with domain-dependent differences between the two sources. We interpret these results through a search lens: test-time reasoning is deep search inside a single episode, re-paid at every deployment, while corpus distillation is wide search across episodes, paid once. The two recover overlapping procedural knowledge, and width over cheap trajectories is often the better buy -- with the residual gap on some domains (telecom, SpreadsheetBench) delineating where genuinely per-instance deep search remains necessary.

推理蒸馏技能提取效率优化代理系统

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