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Self-Evolving Agent Harness

arXiv:2610.18813AICL13 oct 20261 min readHN ×5PDF

Agents can improve by rewriting their own prompts, memory and code while the model stays frozen.

77.58%

SpreadsheetBench accuracy, small model

A small model with an evolved harness beats a bigger model

How it works

  1. Agents stop adapting

    Deployed agents meet new tasks, but retraining weights is costly, opaque, and impossible through closed APIs.

  2. Evolve the harness

    Use run feedback to revise prompts, memory, workflows and code, then admit revisions only after fresh validation.

  3. Gains with guardrails

    Bounds cover generalization, forgetting and safe admission; cited cases show big gains but persistent errors spread.

executefeedbackcandidatesadmitnext roundCurrentharnessRun taskbatchProposerevisionsFreshvalidation checkPersistednew harnessexecutefeedbackcandidatesadmitnext roundCurrentharnessRun taskbatchProposerevisionsFreshvalidation checkPersistednew harness
From the paper