AhaBench: Do Agents Turn Experience into Reusable Insights? A Long-Horizon Benchmark for Continual Learning

arXiv:2609.05435v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Can language agents continually learn from experience, turning earlier interactions into reusable capabilities? AhaBench evaluates this ability through exploration after solved hidden-state puzzles, computational transfer after mathematical teaching, and sustained business operation under delayed feedback. The benchmark is agnostic to how an agent learns; the evaluated agents use fixed model weights. Curriculum profiles, teaching contrasts, and daily trajectories reveal a common challenge: using explicit guidance is more reliable than generalizing beyond it or sustaining useful behavior. Across the Puzzle panel, the advantage over matched cold targets is 36.0-53.5 points greater with trace support than at the trace-free endpoint; Qwen 3.6 Plus nevertheless retains a +12.57-point post-curriculum gain. In Euler, worked procedures yield 80.0-100.0% held-out accuracy across models, while question-plus-answer teaching yields 0.0-73.9%. Vending trajectories separate sustained profit, late recovery, and incomplete operation: Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro finishes nominal operation at +495 but averages -10 over the year. Together, these results make continual learning an operational target: experience should yield capabilities that remain effective as guidance, inputs, and business states change. We release tasks, validators, a simulator, records, and analyses for developing agents that turn useful insights into lasting abilities.