Self-improving AI / Gödel Agent
Gödel Agent
“we introduce Gödel Agent, a self-evolving framework inspired by the Gödel machine, enabling agents to recursively improve themselves without relying on predefined routines or fixed optimization algorithms.”
Gödel Agent is one of the projects on the self-improving AI map. Below is what it changes about itself, whether the change lasts, and whether it improves the improver, each with the line from its own source.
Where it sits
Columns: what it changes, from the surface to the deepest change. Rows: whether the change outlasts the run. A number is how many projects sit in that square. See it on the 3D map
- What it changes
- Tools, harness, its own code“Gödel Agent leverages LLMs to dynamically modify its own logic and behavior”
- Does the change last
- Gone when the run ends“It employs monkey patching to directly read and modify its own code in runtime memory”
- Does it improve the improver
- improves the task agent; no evidence the improver got better“Gödel Agent can analyze and modify its own code, including the code for analyzing and modifying”
- Who sets the goals
- people set tasks and scoring“We perform 6 independent self-improvement cycles on the validation dataset for each task”
- How it was tested
- tested on held-out tasks“After obtaining the optimized agent, we test it on the test set.”
Changes live in runtime memory. The paper tests the optimized agent afterwards but does not describe it being kept and improved further. The loop can rewrite its own optimizer, and a Game of 24 case study lists such changes, but no experiment measures whether the optimizer got better; the paper says that in some runs it "reaches its performance limit without further enhancing its optimization capabilities".
Does it count as RSI?
It depends on the definition. Under the four used on What counts as RSI, by what its own source says:
- Loose (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics (2013)): does not count
- Durable (Ren et al., self-improvement survey (2026)): does not count
- Strict (Roman Yampolskiy, From Seed AI to Technological Singularity (2015)): does not count
- Autonomous (Anthropic, When AI builds itself): does not count
How it got here
Earlier work in this catalog that Gödel Agent cites, oldest first. Under each: where that work sits on the map, then where Gödel Agent sits (changes in bold), and what Gödel Agent's own paper says about it. Its whole family on the citation map
2003 Schmidhuber, the Gödel machine builds on it
A definition: the Gödel machine
“It is inspired by the self-referential Gödel machine (Schmidhuber, 2003), which was proven to be able to find the global optimal solutions.”
“Gödel machine (Schmidhuber, 2003) introduced the notion of a proof searcher that executes a self-modification, thereby enabling the machine to enhance itself.”
2023 Self-Refine uses it
Prompts, memory → Tools, own code · gone when the run ends · does not improve the improver → improves the task agent
“3) Self-Refine (Madaan et al., 2024) that involves agents assessing their outputs and correcting mistakes in subsequent attempts.”
2024 ADAS uses it
Prompts, memory → Tools, own code · gone when the run ends · does not improve the improver → improves the task agent
“Following the setup of Hu et al. (2024), we evaluate Gödel Agent’s self-improvement capabilities across four well-known benchmarks:”
2024 Gödel Agent
Tools, own code · gone when the run ends · improves the task agent
Also cites Good, the intelligence explosion 1965, Hall, self-improving AI 2007, Reflexion 2023, Voyager 2023, STOP 2023, The AI Scientist 2024
Cited by SICA 2025, Darwin Gödel Machine 2025, Hyperagents 2026, Ren, self-improvement 2026, Weco AIDE² 2026, Fibona Agent 2026, LM2LM 2026, RSI Arena 2026, Pu, recursive self-improvement 2026, Skill∞ 2026