# EMMA uses episodic memory to self-improve multi-agent systems

> Original title: Great paper from Amazon and colleagues on self-improving multi-agent systems.

- Source: Elvis Saravia
- Published: 2026-10-28T13:39:02.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/usr5a7uxkarwnlqyxx90mikke
- Original: https://x.com/omarsar0/status/2115438189901181296

## Summary

Amazon and colleagues present EMMA, a self-improving multi-agent system in which one LLM runs a controller, sub-agents, and skills that all update from failures. After a failed task, a reflector decides which component owns the fix and proposes one bounded edit. EMMA outperforms ACE, GEPA, EvoMAS, and ADAS on KramaBench, AppWorld, and BBEH, by up to 32.5% over the strongest baseline, using 17 to 38% fewer training executions.

## Post

Great paper from Amazon and colleagues on self-improving multi-agent systems.

Episodic memory for agents is so underrated.

But I am starting to see lots of good applications as frontier models improve.

This paper is the latest example.

They built a system that has three parts, all run by the same LLM. A controller plans each task and runs it one step at a time, choosing which sub-agent and which skills to use at each step. Sub-agents start as a generalist, and each specialist inherits the generalist's prompt plus its own role-specific method. Skills are short procedures, such as algorithms or pitfall checklists.

EMMA treats the controller's routing memory, the agent prompts, and the skills as episodic memory that improves from failures. After a failed task, a reflector decides which of the three owns the fix and proposes one edit there. Guards keep every accepted edit scoped, incremental, and bounded.

EMMA beats ACE, GEPA, EvoMAS, and ADAS on KramaBench, AppWorld, and BBEH, by up to 32.5% over the strongest baseline, and uses 17 to 38% fewer training executions.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.35966

Chat with Paper: https://academy.dair.ai/papers/emma-structured-episodic-memory-for-multi-agent-workflow-synthesis-2610.35966

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