| name | search-fail-recover-a-training-framework-for-correction-aware-reasoning |
| description | Many reasoning tasks are not well described by a single left-to-right chain: a solver may need to pursue a plausible branch, observe delayed failure, and return to the latest prefix that can still be. Based on arXiv:2607.07492. |
Search, Fail, Recover: A Training Framework for Correction-Aware Reasoning
arXiv: 2607.07492 | Authors: Dmitry Beresnev, Vladimir Makharev, Roman Khalikov, Ivan Oseledets, Petr Anokhin | Utility: 0.87
Overview
Many reasoning tasks are not well described by a single left-to-right chain: a solver may need to pursue a plausible branch, observe delayed failure, and return to the latest prefix that can still be completed. We introduce Pyligent, a training and inference framework inspired by the Diligent Learner formulation that represents reasoning as validated search over partial solution chains. A task validator labels generated continuations and failures, and the resulting search trees are converted into supervised targets for three actions: continue, finish, and backtrack, with optional traces that summarize abandoned branches. We evaluate Pyligent on a hidden directed graph task designed to isolate delayed-failure recovery, and on structured reasoning domains with exact validators, including $4{\times}4$ Sudoku, Sudoku with reasoning traces, and Blocksworld. Compared with gold-only supervised fine-tuning, Pyligent improves solve rate by $72.7$ percentage points on hidden graphs, by $17$ and $18$ points on mixed and expert Sudoku, by $27$ and $14$ points on mixed and expert Sudoku with reasoning traces, and by $13$ points on Blocksworld. These results suggest that explicit failed-branch supervision can teach useful recovery behavior beyond imitation of polished solution chains.
Key Contributions
- Many reasoning tasks are not well described by a single left-to-right chain: a solver may need to pursue a plausible branch, observe delayed failure, and return to the latest prefix that can still be completed.
- We introduce Pyligent, a training and inference framework inspired by the Diligent Learner formulation that represents reasoning as validated search over partial solution chains.
- A task validator labels generated continuations and failures, and the resulting search trees are converted into supervised targets for three actions: continue, finish, and backtrack, with optional traces that summarize abandoned branches.
- We evaluate Pyligent on a hidden directed graph task designed to isolate delayed-failure recovery, and on structured reasoning domains with exact validators, including $4{\times}4$ Sudoku, Sudoku with reasoning traces, and Blocksworld.
Implementation Notes
- Keywords: reasoning
- Categories: cs.AI
- Published: 2026-07-08
Activation Criteria
Use this skill when working on tasks involving: reasoning.
