arXiv AI

Spec-Harness: Assessing and Guiding LLM-Synthesized Formal Specifications Beyond Verifiability

arXiv AI
Sep 11

Spec-Harness: Measuring and Improving Behavioral Adequacy of LLM-Synthesized Formal Specifications

Spec‑Harness evaluates how well large language models (LLMs) synthesize Java Modeling Language (JML) specifications by measuring behavioral adequacy across precondition and postcondition correctness and completeness. The study shows that while prompt optimization can raise verifier pass rates, many accepted specifications remain behaviorally weak, either over‑ or under‑constraining inputs and outputs. Spec‑Harness also serves as a feedback mechanism that improves the quality of specifications generated by general‑purpose coding agents and a specialized JML agent.

By Md Rakib Hossain Misu, Iris Ma, Cristina V. Lopes
arXiv AI
Oct 1

Self-Spec Verifiable Code Generation

arXiv:2609.39568v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) may generate unreliable code on corner cases missed by testing, while formal verification can provide machine-checkable...

By Jiaru Qian, Yihong Dong, Yongmin Li, Hao Zhu, Bin Gu, Ge Li
arXiv AI
Oct 9

Beyond Type-checking: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Formal Specification Generation

The paper presents a unified dataset of 350 Lean tasks to evaluate specification generation (SpecGen) for verifiable code, combining metrics of formal validity, reference similarity, equivalence, and behavioural adequacy. It highlights that restricting similarity measures to a subset of tasks can shift rankings, and shows that a perfect postcondition score can still miss critical input coverage, underscoring the need for separate feedback on input and output constraints.

By Srijith Nair, Aditya Vempaty, Jia Liu, Ashish Jagmohan
arXiv AI
Sep 21

SWE-Proof: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World Issues with Machine-Checked Proofs?

arXiv:2609.21190v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ensuring the correctness of LLM-generated code is a core challenge for modern software engineering. Benchmarks for agentic code generation check corr...

By George Ma, Benjamin Mikek, Haoyu Li, Ferhat Erata, Yuhao Zhang, Zeren Shui, Behrooz Omidvar Tehrani, Jun Huan, Murali Krishna Ramanathan, Somayeh Sojoudi, Hao Zhou, Anoop Deoras
arXiv AI
Aug 18

ReLoop: Structured Modeling and Behavioral Verification for Reliable LLM-Based Optimization

arXiv:2602. 15983v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) can translate natural language into optimization code, but silent failures pose a critical risk: code that executes and returns solver-feasible solutions may encode semantically incorrect formulations---a feasibility--correctness gap reaching 90 percentage points on compositional problems.

By Junbo Jacob Lian, Yujun Sun, Huiling Chen, Chaoyu Zhang, Hanzhang Qin, Chung-Piaw Teo
arXiv AI
Oct 9

A Survey on LLM-Integrated Hardware Design Verification

The paper surveys how large language models (LLMs) are being used in hardware verification, covering tasks such as assertion generation, testbench creation, bug localization, and formal reasoning. It categorizes the literature by methodology, verification goal, tool interaction, benchmarks, and evaluation metrics, and distinguishes between inference-time techniques (prompting, retrieval, structured reasoning, agentic workflows) and training-time adaptation. The authors highlight that LLMs excel as semantic reasoning, search, and orchestration components within verification workflows, yet emphasize the need for semantic alignment, scalable integration, generalization, and rigorous evaluation to ensure true verification correctness.

By Hao Zheng, Jaime Rafael Imperial, Bardia Nadimi, Xiangfei Kong
arXiv AI
4d ago

Verification as an Architectural Layer for LLM Agents: A V-Model Design, and a Pilot Study of Its Deterministic Core

The paper proposes adding a verification layer to large language model agents, using a V-model design where each step of the agent’s plan has a dedicated verifier. In a pilot study on the MuSiQue dataset, verified configurations outperformed unverified ones, with deterministic gates correcting most errors at zero cost. The authors plan to extend the architecture to full integration and evaluate it over the next year.

By Ali Afoud, Jie JW Wu