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cs.AI · 2608.11977 · 2026/08/12

Retry, Switch, or Abstain? Learning Strategy-Aware Tool-Use Policies via Controlled Error Injection

Chen, Chaoran, Nguyen, Vy, Zhang, Ziji, Gullapalli, Abhinav, Wang, Ziyi, Lu, Yuxuan, Wang, Dakuo, Huang, Jing
TL;DR:工具调用失败是近乎普遍的稳健性缺口:训练环境工具总是成功,部署后却会瞬时/持续/静默失败。BENCH2ROBUST把无故障基准转成受控随机环境,学「重试/切换/放弃」策略感知的工具使用策略,BTM无重训提升16.8pp,结合RL达40.8-45.5%。

🎯 问题

稳健恢复需要不止重复重试:agent可能要重试同路径、切换到替代路径,或识别无路可走。工具失败模式多样但训练环境不含失败。

🔬 方法

BENCH2ROBUST框架:无故障基准→受控随机环境(episode明确要求重试/切换/停止);两个干预——Bayesian Tool Memory(BTM)结构化运行时恢复上下文 + 课程式RL。7模型4家族×2多轮基准家族。
章节结构(全文标题提取):
1 Introduction
2 The Bench2Robust Framework
3 Strategy-Aware Training
4 Experimental Setup
5 Results
6 Discussion
7 Related Work
8 Conclusion
2.1 Scenario-Controlled Solvability
2.2 Alternative Tool Paths
3.1 Bayesian Tool Memory (BTM)
3.2 Reward Design
3.3 Curriculum and DAPO Training
5.1 The Robustness Gap Is Universal
5.2 Within-Benchmark Effectiveness
5.3 BTM Decomposition: Structure vs. Values
5.4 BTM and RL Address Different Failure Regimes

📊 结果

工具失败产生近普遍稳健性缺口;BTM无重训最多提升16.8pp;RL学到互补恢复行为;二者结合在注入下达40.8-45.5%且保留无故障性能。稳健工具使用 = 环境特定恢复知识 + 学到的恢复行为。

💡 与研究方向关联

工具使用 agent 的稳健性 = 环境特定恢复知识 + 学习到的恢复行为。BTM 免重训提升与 RL 互补的组合对 agent 工具调用健壮性有实用价值。

📝 原文摘要

▶ 原文摘要 Abstract
Tool-using LLM agents are commonly trained and evaluated in environments where tool calls succeed reliably, yet deployed tools can fail transiently, persistently, or silently. Robust recovery therefore requires more than repeated retries: an agent may need to retry the same path, switch to an alternative, or recognize that no viable path remains. We present BENCH2ROBUST, a framework that converts failure-free tool-use benchmarks into controlled stochastic environments with scenario-controlled solvability, where episodes explicitly require retrying, switching, or stopping after available paths are exhausted. We use BENCH2ROBUST to study two complementary interventions: structured runtime recovery context through Bayesian Tool Memory (BTM), and curriculum-controlled reinforcement learning. Across 7 models from 4 families and two multi-turn benchmark families, tool failures produce a near-universal robustness gap. On held-out Retail tasks, BTM improves robustness by up to 16.8 percentage points without retraining, while RL learns complementary recovery behavior that remains beneficial without inference-time BTM. Combining the two reaches 40.8-45.5% under injection while preserving failure-free performance. These results suggest that robust tool use benefits from combining environment-specific recovery knowledge with learned recovery behavior.
Deep Read · 2026-08-14高松灯 / Agent 日报
Tool UseRobustnessRLBayesian Memory