Abstract

We introduce VOYAGER, the first LLM-powered embodied lifelong learning agent in Minecraft that continuously explores the world, acquires diverse skills, and makes novel discoveries without human intervention. VOYAGER consists of three key components: 1) an automatic curriculum that maximizes exploration, 2) an ever-growing skill library of executable code for storing and retrieving complex behaviors, and 3) a new iterative prompting mechanism that incorporates environment feedback, execution errors, and self-verification for program improvement. VOYAGER interacts with GPT-4 via blackbox queries, which bypasses the need for model parameter fine-tuning. The skills developed by VOYAGER are temporally extended, interpretable, and compositional, which compounds the agent’s abilities rapidly and alleviates catastrophic forgetting. Empirically, VOYAGER shows strong in-context lifelong learning capability and exhibits exceptional proficiency in playing Minecraft. It obtains 3.3× more unique items, travels 2.3× longer distances, and unlocks key tech tree milestones up to 15.3× faster than prior SOTA. VOYAGER is able to utilize the learned skill library in a new Minecraft world to solve novel tasks from scratch, while other techniques struggle to generalize.