{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/can-a-misl-fly-analysis-and-ingredients-for","title":"Can a MISL Fly? Analysis and Ingredients for Mutual Information Skill Learning","arxiv_id":"2412.08021","date":"2024-12-11","proceeding":null,"authors":["Chongyi Zheng","Jens Tuyls","Joanne Peng","Benjamin Eysenbach"],"abstract":"Self-supervised learning has the potential of lifting several of the key challenges in reinforcement learning today, such as exploration, representation learning, and reward design. Recent work (METRA) has effectively argued that moving away from mutual information and instead optimizing a certain Wasserstein distance is important for good performance. In this paper, we argue that the benefits seen in that paper can largely be explained within the existing framework of mutual information skill learning (MISL). Our analysis suggests a new MISL method (contrastive successor features) that retains the excellent performance of METRA with fewer moving parts, and highlights connections between skill learning, contrastive representation learning, and successor features. Finally, through careful ablation studies, we provide further insight into some of the key ingredients for both our method and METRA.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08021v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.08021v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"can-a-misl-fly-analysis-and-ingredients-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/Princeton-RL/contrastive-successor-features","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"tf","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"representation-learning","task_name":"Representation Learning"},{"task_slug":"self-supervised-learning","task_name":"Self-Supervised Learning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2412.08021","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2412.08021","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2412.08021"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"deterministic:regex_extraction","url":"https://github.com/Princeton-RL/contrastivesuccessor-features","reach":{"status":"gone","observed_at":"2026-09-17","how":"tree_404+repo_404"}},{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/Princeton-RL/contrastive-successor-features","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"summary":{"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":0,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"68a57588acd1e63a","entry":"colorize","repo":"Princeton-RL/contrastive-successor-features","repo_kind":"official","path":"dowel/utils.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Princeton-RL/contrastive-successor-features/blob/HEAD/dowel/utils.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"68a57588acd1e63a"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}