mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Think Only When You Need with Large Hybrid-Reasoning Models

arXiv 2505.14631 ↗First posted 20 May 2025cs.CLcited by 66

On the map: LLM reasoning → Test-time compute and efficient thinking

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have shown substantially improved reasoning capabilities over traditional Large Language Models (LLMs) by incorporating extended thinking processes prior to producing final responses. However, excessively lengthy thinking introduces substantial overhead in terms of token consumption and latency, which is particularly unnecessary for simple queries. In this work, we introduce Large Hybrid-Reasoning Models (LHRMs), the first kind of model capable of adaptively determining whether to perform thinking based on the contextual information of user queries. To achieve this, we propose a two-stage training pipeline comprising Hybrid Fine-Tuning (HFT) as a cold start, followed by online reinforcement learning with the proposed Hybrid Group Policy Optimization (HGPO) to implicitly learn to select the appropriate thinking mode. Furthermore, we introduce a metric called Hybrid Accuracy to quantitatively assess the model's capability for hybrid thinking. Extensive experimental results show that LHRMs can adaptively perform hybrid thinking on queries of varying difficulty and type. It outperforms existing LRMs and LLMs in reasoning and general capabilities while significantly improving efficiency. Together, our work advocates for a reconsideration of the appropriate use of extended thinking processes and provides a solid starting point for building hybrid thinking systems.

Key facts. Cited by 66 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 35 of its 53 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 May 2025.

Builds on

35 of 53 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025s1: Simple test-time scaling31 Jan
  2. 2025O1-Pruner: Length-Harmonizing Fine-Tuning for O1-Like Reasoning Pruning22 Jan
  3. 2024Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMs30 Dec
  4. 2024Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters6 Aug

Other references · 31

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  3. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
  4. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
  5. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
  6. 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,637
  7. 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
  8. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 2,004
  9. 2024LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Modelscited by 1,464
  10. 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,391
  11. 2024OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problemscited by 1,136
  12. 2024Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvementcited by 1,090
19 more
  1. 2024Large Language Monkeys: Scaling Inference Compute with Repeated Samplingcited by 991
  2. 2024Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluatorscited by 897
  3. 2023OpenAssistant Conversations -- Democratizing Large Language Model Alignmentcited by 721
  4. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 665
  5. 2024WildChat: 1M ChatGPT Interaction Logs in the Wildcited by 629
  6. 2024From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipelinecited by 500
  7. 2025Video-R1: Reinforcing Video Reasoning in MLLMscited by 484
  8. 2023Scaling Relationship on Learning Mathematical Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 427
  9. 2016FastText.zip: Compressing text classification modelscited by 335
  10. 2025Towards Large Reasoning Models: A Survey of Reinforced Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 293
  11. 2023Planning with Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 182
  12. 2025AIMO-2 Winning Solution: Building State-of-the-Art Mathematical Reasoning Models with OpenMathReasoning datasetcited by 174
  13. 2024Evaluating Language Models for Efficient Code Generationcited by 73
  14. 2023Rewarding Chatbots for Real-World Engagement with Millions of Userscited by 59
  15. 20251.4 Million Open-Source Distilled Reasoning Dataset to Empower Large Language Model Trainingcited by 49
  16. 2023KCTS: Knowledge-Constrained Tree Search Decoding with Token-Level Hallucination Detectioncited by 45
  17. 2025Teaching Language Models to Critique via Reinforcement Learningcited by 42
  18. 2025Video-T1: Test-Time Scaling for Video Generationcited by 40
  19. 2025Leveraging Online Olympiad-Level Math Problems for LLMs Training and Contamination-Resistant Evaluationcited by 29

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 30; 2026: 36.

66 papers.

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  1. 2025Does Thinking More always Help? Mirage of Test-Time Scaling in Reasoning Modelscited by 53
  2. 2025Reinforcement Pre-Trainingcited by 40
  3. 2025Don't Overthink It: A Survey of Efficient R1-style Large Reasoning Modelscited by 37
  4. 2025Reinforcement Learning Meets Large Language Models: A Survey of Advancements and Applications Across the LLM Lifecyclecited by 35
  5. 2025Reasoning on a Budget: A Survey of Adaptive and Controllable Test-Time Compute in LLMscited by 31
  6. 2025Mini-Omni-Reasoner: Token-Level Thinking-in-Speaking in Large Speech Modelscited by 21
  7. 2025The Price of a Second Thought: On the Evaluation of Reasoning Efficiency in Large Language Modelscited by 18
  8. 2025Towards Concise and Adaptive Thinking in Large Reasoning Models: A Surveycited by 18
  9. 2025MUR: Momentum Uncertainty guided Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 17
  10. 2026Self-Compression of Chain-of-Thought via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
  11. 2025KAT-V1: Kwai-AutoThink Technical Reportcited by 12
  12. 2025DriveAgent-R1: Advancing VLM-based Autonomous Driving with Active Perception and Hybrid Thinkingcited by 12
38 more
  1. 2025SABER: Switchable and Balanced Training for Efficient LLM Reasoningcited by 12
  2. 2025MAS-Bench: A Unified Benchmark for Shortcut-Augmented Hybrid Mobile GUI Agentscited by 11
  3. 2025Rethinking Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Videoscited by 9
  4. 2026Generate, Filter, Control, Replay: A Comprehensive Survey of Rollout Strategies for LLM Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
  5. 2025How Far Are We from Optimal Reasoning Efficiency?cited by 8
  6. 2025Hierarchical Budget Policy Optimization for Adaptive Reasoningcited by 8
  7. 2025Test-Time Scaling in Diffusion LLMs via Hidden Semi-Autoregressive Expertscited by 8
  8. 2026Neural Chain-of-Thought Search: Searching the Optimal Reasoning Path to Enhance Large Language Modelscited by 8
  9. 2026Fake-HR1: Rethinking Reasoning of Vision Language Model for Synthetic Image Detectioncited by 8
  10. 2026ThinkRouter: Efficient Reasoning via Routing Thinking between Latent and Discrete Spacescited by 8
  11. 2025R-Stitch: Dynamic Trajectory Stitching for Efficient Reasoningcited by 7
  12. 2026Mid-Think: Training-Free Intermediate-Budget Reasoning via Token-Level Triggerscited by 6
  13. 2026LongFlow: Efficient KV Cache Compression for Reasoning Modelscited by 6
  14. 2026Mitigating Overthinking in Large Reasoning Language Models via Reasoning Path Deviation Monitoringcited by 6
  15. 2026When Is Thinking Enough? Early Exit via Sufficiency Assessment for Efficient Reasoningcited by 6
  16. 2025Thinking-Free Policy Initialization Makes Distilled Reasoning Models More Effective and Efficient Reasonerscited by 5
  17. 2025PEAR: Phase Entropy Aware Reward for Efficient Reasoningcited by 5
  18. 2026TreeAdv: Tree-Structured Advantage Redistribution for Group-Based RLcited by 5
  19. 2026When to Think, When to Speak: Learning Disclosure Policies for LLM Reasoningcited by 5
  20. 2025From "Aha Moments" to Controllable Thinking: Toward Meta-Cognitive Reasoning in Large Reasoning Models via Decoupled Reasoning and Controlcited by 4
  21. 2025Putting on the Thinking Hats: A Survey on Chain of Thought Fine-tuning from the Perspective of Human Reasoning Mechanismcited by 4
  22. 2026ConPress: Learning Efficient Reasoning from Multi-Question Contextual Pressurecited by 4
  23. 2026Stable Adaptive Thinking via Advantage Shaping and Length-Aware Gradient Regulationcited by 4
  24. 2026ESTAR: Early-Stopping Token-Aware Reasoning For Efficient Inferencecited by 3
  25. 2025Fast, Slow, and Tool-augmented Thinking for LLMs: A Reviewcited by 2
  26. 2025AdaThink-Med: Optimizing Inference-Time Compute for Medical Reasoning via Uncertainty Quantificationcited by 2
  27. 2025Adaptive Dual Reasoner: Large Reasoning Models Can Think Efficiently by Hybrid Reasoningcited by 2
  28. 2025Metis-HOME: Hybrid Optimized Mixture-of-Experts for Multimodal Reasoningcited by 2
  29. 2025Can Confidence Estimates Decide When Chain-of-Thought Is Necessary for LLMs?cited by 2
  30. 2026Reinforcement Learning Enhanced Multi-hop Reasoning for Temporal Knowledge Question Answeringcited by 2
  31. 2026When Do LLMs Reason? A Dynamical Systems View via Entropy Phase Transitionscited by 2
  32. 20263SPO: State-Score-Supervised Policy Optimization for LLM Agentscited by 2
  33. 2025Schema-R1: A reasoning training approach for schema linking in Text-to-SQL Taskcited by 1
  34. 2025Learning to Extract Rational Evidence via Reinforcement Learning for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 1
  35. 2026Thinking-Based Non-Thinking: Solving the Reward Hacking Problem in Training Hybrid Reasoning Models via Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  36. 2026HotelQuEST: Balancing Quality and Efficiency in Agentic Searchcited by 1
  37. 2026VisRef: Visual Refocusing while Thinking Improves Test-Time Scaling in Multi-Modal Large Reasoning Modelscited by 1
  38. 2026Efficient Agentic Reasoning Through Self-Regulated Simulative Planningcited by 1

50 most cited of 66 All 66 (JSON)

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  1. 2025Training Language Models to Reason Efficiently
  2. 2025HiPO: Hybrid Policy Optimization for Dynamic Reasoning in LLMs
  3. 2025Thinkless: LLM Learns When to Think
  4. 2025Incentivizing Dual Process Thinking for Efficient Large Language Model Reasoning
  5. 2025Don't Think Longer, Think Wisely: Optimizing Thinking Dynamics for Large Reasoning Models
  6. 2025From Efficiency to Adaptivity: A Deeper Look at Adaptive Reasoning in Large Language Models
  7. 2026Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of Large Reasoning Models: A Survey of Training, Inference, and Failures
  8. 2025MOTIF: Modular Thinking via Reinforcement Fine-tuning in LLMs