arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Trace Integrity for LLM Data Agents: A Vision for Auditable Structured Reasoning in Real-World Systems

The paper argues that answer accuracy alone is insufficient for evaluating large language model (LLM) data agents, especially in structured-data tasks where a correct answer can be produced by an invalid trace. It introduces Trace Integrity as a reliability criterion that ensures the computation behind an answer is explicit, executable, schema-valid, operator-faithful, replayable, answer-consistent, and auditable. The authors operationalize this concept with execution contracts and present the CAIT (Correct Answer / Invalid Trace) Rate to quantify how often answer-only evaluations mistakenly reward unsupported outputs, demonstrating that accuracy, trace validity, and silent-failure risk are distinct signals.

By Srimonti Dutta, Akshata Kishore Moharir
arXiv AI
Jun 16

From Agent Traces to Trust: A Survey of Evidence Tracing and Execution Provenance in LLM Agents

arXiv:2606. 04990v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-based agents are evolving from passive text generators into autonomous systems capable of planning, tool use, retrieval, memory access, environmental interaction, and multi-agent collaboration.

By Yiqi Wang, Jiaqi Zhang, Taotao Cai, Zirui Liu, Qingqiang Sun, Zequn Sun, Zhangkai Wu, Manqing Dong, Mingkai Zhang, Xuefei Yin, Yanming Zhu
arXiv AI
4d ago

ContractEval: Query-Conditioned Execution Matching for Procedural Instruction Conformance

ContractEval is a diagnostic framework that makes active obligations in procedural instructions explicit by representing them as query‑conditioned obligations. It matches these obligations against response or trace evidence, identifying omissions, wrong branches, ordering errors, extra actions, invariant breaches, and output‑contract violations as distinct conformance failures. In tests on audited procedural contracts, ContractEval detects and localizes all injected structural failures that output‑only and trace‑aware LLM judges miss, though it is not a compliance guarantee and remains calibration‑sensitive.

By Praphul Singh, Shanu Kumar, Akshat Agarwal, Ganesh Kumar