Agent0: A Fully Autonomous AI Framework that Evolves High-Performing Agents without External Data through Multi-Step Co-Evolution

Large language fashions want big human datasets, so what occurs if the mannequin should create all its personal curriculum and train itself to make use of instruments? A workforce of researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill, Salesforce Research and Stanford University introduce ‘Agent0’, a totally autonomous framework that evolves high-performing brokers without exterior information through multi-step co-evolution and seamless software integration

Agent0 targets mathematical and basic reasoning. It reveals that cautious activity technology and gear built-in rollouts can push a base mannequin past its unique capabilities, throughout ten benchmarks.

Two brokers from one base mannequin

Agent0 begins from a base coverage π_base, for instance Qwen3 4B Base or Qwen3 8B Base. It clones this coverage into:

• a Curriculum Agent πθ that generates duties,
• an Executor Agent πϕ that solves these duties with a Python software.

Training proceeds in iterations with two phases per iteration:

1. Curriculum evolution: The curriculum agent generates a batch of duties. For every activity, the executor samples a number of responses. A composite reward measures how unsure the executor is, how usually it makes use of the software and the way numerous the batch is. πθ is up to date with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) utilizing this reward.
2. Executor evolution: The educated curriculum agent is frozen. It generates a big pool of duties. Agent0 filters this pool to maintain solely duties close to the executor’s functionality frontier, then trains the executor on these duties utilizing an ambiguity conscious RL goal known as Ambiguity Dynamic Policy Optimization (ADPO).

This loop creates a suggestions cycle. As the executor turns into stronger through the use of the code interpreter, the curriculum should generate extra complicated, software reliant issues to maintain its reward excessive.

How the curriculum agent scores duties?

The curriculum reward combines three indicators:

Uncertainty reward: For every generated activity x, the executor samples okay responses and majority votes a pseudo reply. Self consistency p̂(x) is the fraction of responses that agree with this majority. The reward is maximal when p̂ is near 0.5 and low when duties are too simple or too arduous. This encourages duties that are difficult however nonetheless solvable for the present executor.

Tool use reward: The executor can set off a sandboxed code interpreter utilizing python tags and receives outcomes tagged as output. Agent0 counts the variety of software calls in a trajectory and provides a scaled, capped reward, with a cap C set to 4 in experiments. This favors duties that truly require software calls moderately than pure psychological arithmetic.

Repetition penalty: Within every curriculum batch, Agent0 measures pairwise similarity between duties utilizing a BLEU primarily based distance. Tasks are clustered, and a penalty time period will increase with cluster measurement. This discourages the curriculum from producing many close to duplicates.

A composite reward multiplies a format test with a weighted sum of uncertainty and gear rewards minus the repetition penalty. This composite worth feeds into GRPO to replace πθ.

How the executor learns from noisy self labels?

The executor can be educated with GRPO however on multi flip, software built-in trajectories and pseudo labels as a substitute of floor reality solutions.

Frontier dataset development: After curriculum coaching in an iteration, the frozen curriculum generates a big candidate pool. For every activity, Agent0 computes self consistency p̂(x) with the present executor and retains solely duties the place p̂ lies in an informative band, for instance between 0.3 and 0.8. This defines a difficult frontier dataset that avoids trivial or not possible issues.

Multi flip software built-in rollouts: For every frontier activity, the executor generates a trajectory that can interleave:

• pure language reasoning tokens,
• python code segments,
• output software suggestions.

Generation pauses when a software name seems, executes the code in a sandboxed interpreter constructed on VeRL Tool, then resumes conditioned on the outcome. The trajectory terminates when the mannequin produces a closing reply inside {boxed ...} tags.

A majority vote throughout sampled trajectories defines a pseudo label and a terminal reward for every trajectory.

ADPO, ambiguity conscious RL: Standard GRPO treats all samples equally, which is unstable when labels come from majority voting on ambiguous duties. ADPO modifies GRPO in two methods utilizing p̂ as an ambiguity sign.

• It scales the normalized benefit with an element that will increase with self consistency, so trajectories from low confidence duties contribute much less.
• It units a dynamic higher clipping sure for the significance ratio, which is dependent upon self consistency. Empirical evaluation reveals that mounted higher clipping primarily impacts low chance tokens. ADPO relaxes this sure adaptively, which improves exploration on unsure duties, as visualized by the up clipped token chance statistics.

Results on mathematical and basic reasoning

Agent0 is carried out on high of VeRL and evaluated on Qwen3 4B Base and Qwen3 8B Base. It makes use of a sandboxed Python interpreter as the one exterior software.

The analysis workforce consider on ten benchmarks:

• Mathematical reasoning: AMC, Minerva, MATH, GSM8K, Olympiad Bench, AIME24, AIME25.
• General reasoning: SuperGPQA, MMLU Pro, BBEH.

They report go@1 for many datasets and imply@32 for AMC and AIME duties.

For Qwen3 8B Base, Agent0 reaches:

• math common 58.2 versus 49.2 for the bottom mannequin,
• general basic common 42.1 versus 34.5 for the bottom mannequin.

Agent0 additionally improves over robust information free baselines corresponding to R Zero, Absolute Zero, SPIRAL and Socratic Zero, each with and without instruments. On Qwen3 8B, it surpasses R Zero by 6.4 proportion factors and Absolute Zero by 10.6 factors on the general common. It additionally beats Socratic Zero, which depends on exterior OpenAI APIs.

Across three co evolution iterations, common math efficiency on Qwen3 8B will increase from 55.1 to 58.2 and basic reasoning additionally improves per iteration. This confirms secure self enchancment moderately than collapse.

Qualitative examples present that curriculum duties evolve from fundamental geometry inquiries to complicated constraint satisfaction issues, whereas executor trajectories combine reasoning textual content with Python calls to succeed in appropriate solutions.

Key Takeaways

1. Fully information free co evolution: Agent0 eliminates exterior datasets and human annotations. Two brokers, a curriculum agent and an executor agent, are initialized from the identical base LLM and co evolve solely by way of reinforcement studying and a Python software.
2. Frontier curriculum from self uncertainty: The curriculum agent makes use of the executor’s self consistency and gear utilization to attain duties. It learns to generate frontier duties that are neither trivial nor not possible, and that explicitly require software built-in reasoning.
3. ADPO stabilizes RL with pseudo labels: The executor is educated with Ambiguity Dynamic Policy Optimization. ADPO down weights extremely ambiguous duties and adapts the clipping vary primarily based on self consistency, which makes GRPO type updates secure when rewards come from majority vote pseudo labels.
4. Consistent positive aspects on math and basic reasoning: On Qwen3 8B Base, Agent0 improves math benchmarks from 49.2 to 58.2 common and basic reasoning from 34.5 to 42.1, which corresponds to relative positive aspects of about 18 % and 24 %.
5. Outperforms prior zero information frameworks: Across ten benchmarks, Agent0 surpasses earlier self evolving strategies corresponding to R Zero, Absolute Zero, SPIRAL and Socratic Zero, together with these that already use instruments or exterior APIs. This reveals that the co evolution plus software integration design is a significant step past earlier single spherical self play approaches.

Editorial Notes

Agent0 is a vital step towards sensible, information free reinforcement studying for software built-in reasoning. It reveals that a base LLM can act as each Curriculum Agent and Executor Agent, and that GRPO with ADPO and VeRL Tool can drive secure enchancment from majority vote pseudo labels. The methodology additionally demonstrates that software built-in co evolution can outperform prior zero information frameworks corresponding to R Zero and Absolute Zero on robust Qwen3 baselines. Agent0 makes a robust case that self evolving, software built-in LLM brokers have gotten a sensible coaching paradigm.

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