SkillGym: Internalizing Human Skills into LLMs for Real-World Problem Solving

arXiv:2609.27717 · cs.CL · Submitted 2026-09-23 · Read on arXiv

cs.CL

Submitted: 2026-09-23

Updated: 2026-09-24

Code: https://github.com/ECNU-ICALK/SkillGym

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Human-written agent skills encode rich workflows for real-world problem solving, but are typically used as external inference-time instructions rather than internalized as reusable model capabilities.

Terminology

Abstract

Human-written agent skills encode rich workflows for real-world problem solving, but are typically used as external inference-time instructions rather than internalized as reusable model capabilities. We introduce SkillGym, a framework that transforms these skills into executable, verifiable training environments for large language model agents. Its skill-to-task pipeline instantiates concrete tasks, verifies outcomes with code-based checkers, and assesses empirical skill dependence through contrastive executions. We construct and release 2,756 environments across 12 categories and collect 8,364 successful trajectories from multiple models and harnesses, averaging 49 tool calls and over 60k logged text tokens. These resources support supervised fine-tuning on verified workflows and reinforcement learning with outcome-based rewards. Under Claude Code, supervised fine-tuning improves Qwen3.5-35B-A3B by 199 Elo on GDPval-AA v2, 19.10 percentage points on Terminal-Bench 2.1, and 28.13 and 12.38 points on SkillsBench v1.1 with and without skills, respectively. Our 35B SkillGym-Agent reaches 51.47% on skill-assisted SkillsBench, exceeding reported scores for Claude Sonnet 4.6, GPT-5.4 Mini, and DeepSeek V4 Pro. Without skills, it also surpasses skill-assisted bases under Codex and Claude Code, suggesting reusable procedural competence.

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