Paper proposes work-centric framework for work agents' systems, capabilities and optimization

[HF Papers] A preprint titled "Work Agents: Systems, Capabilities, and Optimization" by Zishan Xu, Enjun Du, Mingqi Gao, Cheng Yang, Junhao Shen and Zirong Chen presents a work-centric, system-level perspective that views work agents as systems combining foundation models and runtime harnesses to execute tasks in stateful workspaces and deliver verifiable outcomes. According to the authors, the paper introduces two dimensions, work persistence and work openness, to characterize working conditions, and classifies digital work into five forms by task scope and organization. It identifies five core capability families required for reliable work execution and examines model optimization, harness optimization and their joint optimization, then analyzes existing evaluation methods and metrics from the perspective of work outcomes. The authors also discuss future directions including sustained work delegation, adaptation to open environments and the interaction between work execution and capability improvement. The paper is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed.