Fix, Not Just Resample: Bounded Compiler-Guided Repair in Lean 4
cs.AI
Submitted: 2026-10-18
Updated: 2026-10-18
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Automated theorem provers often rely on sampling language models, but proof assistants like Lean reject each failed step with a precise error message --- information that pure sampling discards.
Abstract
Automated theorem provers often rely on sampling language models, but proof assistants like Lean reject each failed step with a precise error message --- information that pure sampling discards. To overcome this, we introduce a bounded, online step-level repair module. Our search samples K candidate tactics at each step and repairs a failed tactic at most R times. Instead of discarding failed tactics, we feed the compiler's error message to a pretrained repair model to fix individual rejected steps in place. This approach improves the solve rate over a sampling-only baseline across all tested candidate budgets (K in 1,3,5,8), achieving up to a 32% relative gain and solving 82 additional theorems on a 1, 990-theorem subset of the LeanDojo benchmark. Repair is not free: it trades extra runtime for reachable proofs. But the trade is predictable: repair pays most when sampling is constrained; its return is front-loaded, with the first repair attempt capturing 84--96% of the total gain; and the gain comes almost entirely from shallow tactic-execution failures rather than structural errors such as type mismatches. This targeted repair successfully replicates on a second benchmark (Lean Workbook), nearly doubling the solve rate with zero regressions.
Related papers
- MAVEN-T: Reinforced Heterogeneous Distillation for Real-Time Multi-Agent Trajectory Prediction
- Model Discovery Agent: LLM-assisted Bayesian experiment design for data-efficient discovery of mechanistic world models
- Agents' Last Exam
- The Clinician's Veto: Navigating Trust, Liability, and Uncertainty in Autonomous AI Prescribing
- MindHelper: Closed-Loop Embodied Mental-State Reasoning for Precision Intervention
- Incumbent Advantage: Brand Bias and Cognitive Manipulation Dynamics in LLM Recommendation Systems