Weiran Yao

UserRL: Training Interactive User-Centric Agent via Reinforcement Learning

arXiv (arXiv), 2025

Abstract

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in training agentic models that move beyond static benchmarks to engage in dynamic, multi-turn interactions. Yet, the ultimate value of such agents lies in their ability to assist users, a setting where diversity and dynamics of user interaction pose challenges. In this work, we propose UserRL, a unified framework for training and evaluating user-centric abilities through standardized gym environments paired with simulated users. We systematically vary turn-level reward assignment and trajectory-level score calculation to analyze how different formulations affect learning under the GRPO algorithm. Our experiments across Qwen3 models reveal three key findings: (i) SFT cold start is critical for unlocking initial interaction ability and enabling sustained RL improvements; (ii) deliberate trajectory scoring yields more efficient and effective multi-turn interactions; and (iii) while stronger simulated users (e.g., GPT-4o) facilitates training, open-source simulators (e.g., Qwen3-32B) remain a cost-effective and transferable option. Together, these results highlight that careful design of reward shaping and user simulation choice is as crucial as model scale, and establish UserRL as a practical pathway for developing robust user-centric agentic models. All codes and data are public for future research.

Framework

BibTeX

			
@article{qian2025userrl,
  title={UserRL: Training Interactive User-Centric Agent via Reinforcement Learning},
  author={Qian, Cheng and Liu, Zuxin and Prabhakar, Akshara and Qiu, Jielin and Liu, Zhiwei and Chen, Haolin and Kokane, Shirley and Ji, Heng and Yao, Weiran and Heinecke, Shelby and Savarese, Silvio and Xiong, Caiming and Wang, Huan},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.19736},
  year={2025}
}