Catch It Where It Happens: Real Time Error Correction During LLM Reasoning

Computer Science > Computation and Language

[Submitted on 9 Nov 2026]

Title:Catch It Where It Happens: Real Time Error Correction During LLM Reasoning

View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly trusted with mathematical, scientific and engineering work, yet their mistakes are often confidently written and hard to spot. A single wrong step tends to propagate, making the model waste inference tokens following a false premise. Existing safeguards either check only the final answer and restart from scratch, or rely on a verifier LLM that competes for GPU capacity and slows down response time. We propose online, deterministic verification: many kinds of reasoning steps can be validated by code, so a step can be verified in real time, as it is written, without any model call or GPU use. Whenever a check fails, we point out the mistake and let the model continue from the same spot. We demonstrate this approach on symbolic mathematics, where derivations already contain explicit expressions that a computer algebra system can check in milliseconds. Tested on the ASyMoB benchmark with three open-weights models, our online validation improves accuracy by 1.4-5.6 percentage points, corresponding to a 1.8-14.9% net reduction in incorrect answers, while increasing token usage by only 6-7%. Because the verifier is independent of the model, the approach complements progress in LLMs rather than competing with it: every new model can benefit immediately, and the benefit grows as deterministic checkers extend to more kinds of reasoning steps.

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