arXiv:2603.08095v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In scientific reasoning tasks, the veracity of the reasoning process is as critical as the final outcome. While Process Reward Models (PRMs) offer a solution to the coarse-grained supervision problems inherent in Outcome Reward Models (ORMs), their deployment is hindered by the prohibitive cost of obtaining expert-verified step-wise labels. This paper addresses the challenge of training reliable PRMs using abundant but noisy "weak" supervision. We argue that existing Weak-to-Strong Generalization (W2SG) theories lack prescriptive guidelines for selecting high-quality training signals from noisy data. To bridge this gap, we introduce the Dual-Consensus Weak-to-Strong (DC-W2S) framework. By intersecting Self-Consensus (SC) metrics among weak supervisors with Neighborhood-Consensus (NC) metrics in the embedding space, we stratify supervision signals into distinct reliability regimes. We then employ a curriculum of instance-level balanced sampling and label-level reliability-aware masking to guide the training process. We demonstrate that DC-W2S enables the training of robust PRMs for complex reasoning without exhaustive expert annotation, proving that strategic data curation is more effective than indiscriminate training on large-scale noisy datasets.

arXiv:2512.16301v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are moving beyond prompting alone. ChatGPT marked the rise of general-purpose LLM assistants, DeepSeek showed that on-policy reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards can improve reasoning and tool use, and OpenClaw highlights a newer direction in which agents accumulate persistent memory and reusable skills. Yet the research landscape remains fragmented across post-training, retrieval, memory, and skill systems. This survey studies these developments under a single notion of \emph{adaptation}: improving an agent, its tools, or their interaction after pretraining. We organize the field with a four-paradigm framework spanning agent adaptation and tool adaptation. On the agent side, A1 (tool-execution-signaled) and A2 (agent-output-signaled) improve the agent itself through supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards. On the tool side, T1 (agent-agnostic) provides reusable pre-trained modules any agent can call, while T2 (agent-supervised) uses the agent's outputs to train memory systems, skill libraries, or lightweight subagents. Using this framework, we review post-training methods, adaptive memory architectures, and agent skills; compare their trade-offs in cost, flexibility, and generalization; and summarize evaluation practices across deep research, software development, computer use, and drug discovery. We conclude by outlining open problems in agent-tool co-adaptation, continual learning, safety, and efficient deployment.