{"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/direct-multi-turn-preference-optimization-for","title":"Direct Multi-Turn Preference Optimization for Language Agents","arxiv_id":"2406.14868","date":"2024-06-21","proceeding":null,"authors":["Wentao Shi","Mengqi Yuan","Junkang Wu","Qifan Wang","Fuli Feng"],"abstract":"Adapting Large Language Models (LLMs) for agent tasks is critical in developing language agents. Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a promising technique for this adaptation with the alleviation of compounding errors, offering a means to directly optimize Reinforcement Learning (RL) objectives. However, applying DPO to multi-turn tasks presents challenges due to the inability to cancel the partition function. Overcoming this obstacle involves making the partition function independent of the current state and addressing length disparities between preferred and dis-preferred trajectories. In this light, we replace the policy constraint with the state-action occupancy measure constraint in the RL objective and add length normalization to the Bradley-Terry model, yielding a novel loss function named DMPO for multi-turn agent tasks with theoretical explanations. Extensive experiments on three multi-turn agent task datasets confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the DMPO loss. The code is available at https://github.com/swt-user/DMPO.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14868v4","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.14868v4.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":"direct-multi-turn-preference-optimization-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/swt-user/dmpo","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"reinforcement-learning-1","task_name":"Reinforcement Learning (RL)"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"dpo","method_name":"DPO"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2406.14868","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2406.14868"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+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":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/swt-user/dmpo","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"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":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"91b0f8598b261907","entry":"step","repo":"swt-user/dmpo","repo_kind":"official","path":"eval_agent/utils/replace_sciworld_score.py","file_url":"https://github.com/swt-user/dmpo/blob/HEAD/eval_agent/utils/replace_sciworld_score.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"91b0f8598b261907"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}