In plain words: Instead of copying expert examples, the model answers with the example in view, then learns from its own answers so old skills stay intact. This kept new-task accuracy higher and forgetting far lower, letting one model add skills over time without losing them.
Abstract
Continual learning, enabling models to acquire new skills and knowledge without degrading existing capabilities, remains a fundamental challenge for foundation models. While on-policy reinforcement learning can reduce forgetting, it requires explicit reward functions that are often unavailable. Learning from expert demonstrations, the primary alternative, is dominated by supervised fine-tuning (SFT), which is inherently off-policy. We introduce Self-Distillation Fine-Tuning (SDFT), a simple method that enables on-policy learning directly from demonstrations. SDFT leverages in-context learning by using a demonstration-conditioned model as its own teacher, generating on-policy training signals that preserve prior capabilities while acquiring new skills. Across skill learning and knowledge acquisition tasks, SDFT consistently outperforms SFT, achieving higher new-task accuracy while substantially reducing catastrophic forgetting. In sequential learning experiments, SDFT enables a single model to accumulate multiple skills over time without performance regression, establishing on-policy distillation as a practical path to continual learning from demonstrations.
Idan Shenfeld, Mehul Damani, Jonas Hübotter, Pulkit Agrawal
arXiv:2601.19897 · cs.LG · submitted Jan 27, 2026 · updated Aug 7, 2026
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