Fix, Not Just Resample: Bounded Compiler-Guided Repair in Lean 4

arXiv:2610.26942 · cs.AI · Submitted 2026-10-18 · Read on arXiv

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.

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