Harness-Model Collaboration for Long-Horizon Continual Learning

Long-horizon agents continuously encounter reusable procedural knowledge, yet existing systems typically rely either on model adaptation or external memory, trading persistent learning for rapid reuse. This limitation is especially important for Web agents that repeatedly execute related multi-step workflows. We propose HaMo, a Harness-Model collaborative framework that combines fast non-parametric experience accumulation with slow parametric adaptation. HaMo distills trajectories into strategy-level experience cards for immediate retrieval, while an experience-conditioned continual learning objective trains the model to interpret, ground, and execute retrieved strategies across changing contexts. A retrieval-coverage-based selection mechanism further identifies compact and complementary trajectories for parameter updates. Experiments show that HaMo outperforms harness-only and model-only adaptation under within-domain and cross-domain shifts, improving both retention and adaptation. These results highlight the importance of jointly preserving procedural experience and internalizing the competence to transfer and execute it across tasks.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
arXiv (Cornell University)
Published
2026-10-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2610.34724
Primary Topic
Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
Type
preprint
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preprint

Harness-Model Collaboration for Long-Horizon Continual Learning

Zhen Bi, Jungang Lou, Qing Shen, Haofei Zhang et al.
arXiv (Cornell University)
Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
preprint

Harness-Model Collaboration for Long-Horizon Continual Learning

Zhen Bi, Jungang Lou, Qing Shen, Haofei Zhang, Zhizhi Peng, Xueshu Chen, Yan Wang, Yaobo Zhang, Zeyu Yang
preprint en

Abstract

Long-horizon agents continuously encounter reusable procedural knowledge, yet existing systems typically rely either on model adaptation or external memory, trading persistent learning for rapid reuse. This limitation is especially important for Web agents that repeatedly execute related multi-step workflows. We propose HaMo, a Harness-Model collaborative framework that combines fast non-parametric experience accumulation with slow parametric adaptation. HaMo distills trajectories into strategy-level experience cards for immediate retrieval, while an experience-conditioned continual learning objective trains the model to interpret, ground, and execute retrieved strategies across changing contexts. A retrieval-coverage-based selection mechanism further identifies compact and complementary trajectories for parameter updates. Experiments show that HaMo outperforms harness-only and model-only adaptation under within-domain and cross-domain shifts, improving both retention and adaptation. These results highlight the importance of jointly preserving procedural experience and internalizing the competence to transfer and execute it across tasks.

arXiv (Cornell University)
Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
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