Belief-Conditioned Multi-Agent Actor Critic for Decentralized LLM Collaboration

Recent work has explored optimizing LLM collaboration through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), but many approaches still rely on predefined workflows, limiting efficiency and scalability. Decentralized LLM collaboration is challenging because agents execute independently with limited communication, share a joint objective, and must infer useful information from communication traces. In this paper, we propose BCMAAC, a Belief-Conditioned Multi-Agent Actor-Critic method that maintains beliefs over contextual information and uses them to facilitate training. Experiments on Minecraft game-playing, web searching and tool-using tasks show that BCMAAC improves task performance and collaborative behavior compared to naive actor-critic baselines. The improvements are particularly pronounced in multi-turn tasks with richer contextual information, where belief modeling provides a clear advantage.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
arXiv (Cornell University)
Published
2026-10-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2610.35398
Primary Topic
Reinforcement Learning in Robotics
Type
preprint
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preprint

Belief-Conditioned Multi-Agent Actor Critic for Decentralized LLM Collaboration

Christopher Amato, Tianle Chen, Shuo Liu
arXiv (Cornell University)
Reinforcement Learning in Robotics
preprint

Belief-Conditioned Multi-Agent Actor Critic for Decentralized LLM Collaboration

Christopher Amato, Tianle Chen, Shuo Liu
preprint en

Abstract

Recent work has explored optimizing LLM collaboration through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), but many approaches still rely on predefined workflows, limiting efficiency and scalability. Decentralized LLM collaboration is challenging because agents execute independently with limited communication, share a joint objective, and must infer useful information from communication traces. In this paper, we propose BCMAAC, a Belief-Conditioned Multi-Agent Actor-Critic method that maintains beliefs over contextual information and uses them to facilitate training. Experiments on Minecraft game-playing, web searching and tool-using tasks show that BCMAAC improves task performance and collaborative behavior compared to naive actor-critic baselines. The improvements are particularly pronounced in multi-turn tasks with richer contextual information, where belief modeling provides a clear advantage.

arXiv (Cornell University)
Reinforcement Learning in Robotics
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