A Survey on the Optimization of Large Language Model-based Agents

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12434v1
• Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2025 10:09:10 GMT
• Title: A Survey on the Optimization of Large Language Model-based Agents
• Authors: Shangheng Du, Jiabao Zhao, Jinxin Shi, Zhentao Xie, Xin Jiang, Yanhong Bai, Liang He,
• Abstract summary: Large Language Models (LLMs) have been widely adopted in various fields, becoming essential for autonomous decision-making and interactive tasks.<n>However, current work typically relies on prompt design or fine-tuning strategies applied to vanilla LLMs.<n>We provide a comprehensive review of LLM-based agent optimization approaches, categorizing them into parameter-driven and parameter-free methods.
• Score: 16.733092886211097
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: With the rapid development of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLM-based agents have been widely adopted in various fields, becoming essential for autonomous decision-making and interactive tasks. However, current work typically relies on prompt design or fine-tuning strategies applied to vanilla LLMs, which often leads to limited effectiveness or suboptimal performance in complex agent-related environments. Although LLM optimization techniques can improve model performance across many general tasks, they lack specialized optimization towards critical agent functionalities such as long-term planning, dynamic environmental interaction, and complex decision-making. Although numerous recent studies have explored various strategies to optimize LLM-based agents for complex agent tasks, a systematic review summarizing and comparing these methods from a holistic perspective is still lacking. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of LLM-based agent optimization approaches, categorizing them into parameter-driven and parameter-free methods. We first focus on parameter-driven optimization, covering fine-tuning-based optimization, reinforcement learning-based optimization, and hybrid strategies, analyzing key aspects such as trajectory data construction, fine-tuning techniques, reward function design, and optimization algorithms. Additionally, we briefly discuss parameter-free strategies that optimize agent behavior through prompt engineering and external knowledge retrieval. Finally, we summarize the datasets and benchmarks used for evaluation and tuning, review key applications of LLM-based agents, and discuss major challenges and promising future directions. Our repository for related references is available at https://github.com/YoungDubbyDu/LLM-Agent-Optimization.

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