Large language model (LLM)-based search agents have proven promising for addressing knowledge-intensive problems by incorporating information retrieval capabilities. Existing works largely focus on optimizing the reasoning paradigms of search agents, yet the quality of intermediate search queries during reasoning remains overlooked. As a result, the generated queries often remain inaccurate, leading to unexpected retrieval results and ultimately limiting search agents' overall effectiveness. To mitigate this issue, we introduce SmartSearch, a framework built upon two key mechanisms: (1) Process rewards, which provide fine-grained supervision for the quality of each intermediate search query through Dual-Level Credit Assessment. (2) Query refinement, which promotes the optimization of query generation by selectively refining low-quality search queries and regenerating subsequent search rounds based on these refinements. To enable the search agent to progressively internalize the ability to improve query quality under the guidance of process rewards, we design a three-stage curriculum learning framework. This framework guides the agent through a progression from imitation, to alignment, and ultimately to generalization. Experimental results show that SmartSearch consistently surpasses existing baselines, and additional quantitative analyses further confirm its significant gains in both search efficiency and query quality. The code is available at https://github.com/MYVAE/SmartSearch.
Automatic In-Domain Exemplar Construction and LLM-Based Refinement of Multi-LLM Expansions for Query Expansion
School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China（苏州大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Center for Information and Language Processing (CIS), LMU Munich, Munich, Germany（慕尼黑莱茵恩大学信息与语言处理中心）；Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Munich, Germany（慕尼黑机器学习中心）；Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden（楚科奇技术大学）
Knowing How to Edit: Reliable Evaluation Signals for Diagnosing and Optimizing Prompts at Query Level
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（信息科学学院，伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University（工程学院，卡内基梅隆大学）
FAIR-RAG: Faithful Adaptive Iterative Refinement for Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Sharif University of Technology（谢里夫理工大学）；Iran University of Science and Technology（伊朗科学技术大学）；Noor Avaran Jelvehaye Maanaei Najm Co., Ltd.（诺尔·阿瓦兰·杰拉维耶·马纳埃尼纳姆公司）
MERLIN: Multimodal Embedding Refinement via LLM-based Iterative Navigation for Text-Video Retrieval-Rerank Pipeline
Buzzni AI Lab（Buzzni人工智能实验室）；KAIST（韩国科学技术院）；Mathpresso Inc.（Mathpresso公司）；UC Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Fainders AI（Fainders人工智能公司）；Seoul National University（首尔大学）
VideoTapestry: Query-Adaptive Memory Refinement for Multi-Agent Long-Video Understanding
University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Jilin University（吉林大学）；Hangzhou Dianzi University（杭州电子科技大学）；Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center（合肥综合性国家科学中心人工智能研究院）
RUFNet: Query-Guided Support Mask Refinement and Uncertainty Fusion based on Hybrid Mamba for Few-Shot Brain Tumor Segmentation
Department of Language Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（香港理工大学语言科学与技术系）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Chongqing University of Technology（重庆理工大学人工智能学院）；Affiliated Lianyungang Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University（徐州医科大学附属连云港医院）；College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University（深圳大学机电与控制工程学院）
University of Maryland（马里兰大学）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
Overcoming Over-Fitting in Constraint Acquisition via Query-Driven Interactive Refinement
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Macedonia（电子与计算机工程系，西马其顿大学）；Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven（计算机科学系，鲁汶大学）
Intent term selection and refinement in e-commerce queries
Institute for Clarity in Documentation（文档清晰性研究所）；Brookhaven Laboratories（布鲁克海文实验室）；NASA Ames Research Center（美国国家航空航天局艾姆斯研究中心）；Palmer Research Laboratories（帕尔默研究实验室）；Inria Paris-Rocquencourt（法国国家信息与自动化研究所巴黎-罗克库尔中心）；Rajiv Gandhi University（拉吉夫·甘地大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学）；WalmartLabs（沃尔玛实验室）
