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HFEPX · Eval paper review

Actor, Judge, or Teacher? Understanding Decision Models in Long-Horizon Agents

Haochen Liu, Qianhao Zhu, Zixuan Wang, Dingming Li +6 more

Published

Nov 12, 2026

Citations

0

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

12/100 (Low)

Extraction confidence

40% (Low)

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Rater population

Not reported

Signals refreshed

Nov 12, 2026

Should you rely on this paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Main weakness

The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.

Human feedback signal
Not explicit
Not explicit in abstract metadata
Evaluation signal
Detected
Eval setup described
Usefulness for eval research
12/100
Adjacent candidate

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Abstract

Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning. Prior work has studied them mainly as actors, judging their usefulness by how well they act. We ask whether a decision model that acts poorly can still teach well. We compare three decision models and three general LLMs as actors and judges on ALFWorld, and use JEV as a teacher on ALFWorld and WebShop. As actors, all six models are pulled away from a subgoal that must come first by an easier one. As judges that see the whole trajectory, the same models credit the steps toward that subgoal, and asking whether each action helped, rather than whether the task will succeed, separates useful from useless actions. As a teacher, JEV raises a Qwen2.5-1.5B policy over GRPO from 72.8% to 82.9% success on ALFWorld and from 56.8% to 71.4% on WebShop. These results suggest that a poor actor can still teach well, because judging an action after the episode ends reveals the consequences that acting must anticipate. Code is available at https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/decision-agents.

What we could verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Simulation Env

Includes extracted eval setup.

"Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning."

Benchmarks and datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Human feedback details
Uses human feedback
No
Feedback types
None
Rater population
Not reported
Unit of annotation
Trajectory (inferred)
Expertise required
Coding
Evaluation details
Evaluation modes
Simulation Env
Agentic eval
Long Horizon
Quality controls
Not reported
Evidence quality
Low
Use this page as
Background context only

Research brief

Metadata summary

Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key takeaways

  • Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with reinforcement learning.
  • Prior work has studied them mainly as actors, judging their usefulness by how well they act.
  • We ask whether a decision model that acts poorly can still teach well.

Researcher actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended queries

Contribution summary

  • Decision models answer a question with a typed output, such as a choice among options with a probability for each, so one model can choose an agent's actions, evaluate actions already taken, or score every action to teach a policy with…
  • Prior work has studied them mainly as actors, judging their usefulness by how well they act.

Why it matters for eval

  • We compare three decision models and three general LLMs as actors and judges on ALFWorld, and use JEV as a teacher on ALFWorld and WebShop.

Researcher checklist

  • Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Simulation Env

  • Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.