arXiv:2611.14149v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Information seeking in large language model (LLM) systems increasingly involves decisions about when to acquire information, where to search, and how to evaluate and use evidence. Recent post-training methods have improved several such behaviors, but their objectives and evaluations span different tasks and system settings. This paper organizes research around six interrelated information-seeking capabilities and examines the learning signals, optimization methods, update loci, and credit-assignment mechanisms used to develop them. We synthesize empirical progress in targeted behaviors, end-to-end performance, search control, and generalization. Existing studies report gains in retrieval routing, query refinement, multi-tool exploration, evidence-grounded reasoning, and resource-aware search, although the scope of behavioral evidence varies across capabilities. We identify open challenges in estimating prospective retrieval utility, coordinating information-seeking decisions, and adapting to unfamiliar retrieval environments, and discuss evaluation practices for interpreting future progress.