PhD final project FOCUS tackles credit assignment for long-horizon agents
EliasEskin · x · 2026-11-03
Zhengping Jiang's final PhD project introduces FOCUS, an active critic learning method for long-horizon agents. Such agents may take hundreds of actions before a single outcome reward, raising two questions: which actions deserve credit, and how training fits with existing context compaction and memory strategies. FOCUS performs active critic learning over managed context states, with modular, customizable context protocols and integrations with Tinker and slime.
His advisor shared the work, calling it especially relevant to many labs and businesses, and noting the author is on the job market.
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