# STRCMP: Integrating Graph Structural Priors with Language Models for Combinatorial Optimization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11057 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11057/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.3215/) (2014)
- [Pointer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03134/) (2015)
- [Large Language Models as Optimizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03409/) (2023)
- [Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimization: a Methodological Tour d'Horizon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06128/) (2018)
- [Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09940/) (2016)
- [LLM+P: Empowering Large Language Models with Optimal Planning Proficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11477/) (2023)
- [Exact Combinatorial Optimization with Graph Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01629/) (2019)
- [ReEvo: Large Language Models as Hyper-Heuristics with Reflective Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01145/) (2024)
- [Evolution of Heuristics: Towards Efficient Automatic Algorithm Design Using Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02051/) (2024)
- [Learning a SAT Solver from Single-Bit Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03685/) (2018)
- [Solving Mixed Integer Programs Using Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13349/) (2020)
- [A Systematic Survey on Large Language Models for Algorithm Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14716/) (2024)
- [MIP-GNN: A Data-Driven Framework for Guiding Combinatorial Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14210/) (2022)
- [Learning to branch with Tree MDPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11107/) (2022)
- [Learning Cut Selection for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming via Hierarchical Sequence Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00244/) (2023)
- [Ecole: A Gym-like Library for Machine Learning in Combinatorial Optimization Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06069/) (2020)
- [CO-Bench: Benchmarking Language Model Agents in Algorithm Search for Combinatorial Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04310/) (2025)
- [AutoSAT: Automatically Optimize SAT Solvers via Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10705/) (2024)
- [A Theoretical and Computational Analysis of Full Strong-Branching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.10754/) (2021)
- [HardSATGEN: Understanding the Difficulty of Hard SAT Formula Generation and A Strong Structure-Hardness-Aware Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02104/) (2023)
- [How Multimodal Integration Boost the Performance of LLM for Optimization: Case Study on Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01757/) (2024)
- [Learning to Cut via Hierarchical Sequence/Set Model for Efficient Mixed-Integer Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12638/) (2024)
- [Bin Packing Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12420/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Large Language Models in Operations Research: Methods, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18180/) (2025)
- [Reinforcement Learning without Ground-Truth Solutions can Improve LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27369/) (2026)
- [BiFE: Search-Efficient Discovery of CPU-Only Branching Policies via LLM-based Bi-Fidelity Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36735/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Combinatorial optimization (CO) problems, central to operation research and theoretical computer science, present significant computational challenges due to their NP-hard nature. While large language models (LLMs) have emerged as promising tools for CO--either by directly generating solutions or synthesizing solver-specific codes--existing approaches often neglect critical structural priors inherent to CO problems, leading to suboptimality and iterative inefficiency. Inspired by human experts' success in leveraging CO structures for algorithm design, we propose STRCMP, a novel structure-aware LLM-based algorithm discovery framework that systematically integrates structure priors to enhance solution quality and solving efficiency. Our framework combines a graph neural network (GNN) for extracting structural embeddings from CO instances with an LLM conditioned on these embeddings to identify high-performing algorithms in the form of solver-specific codes. This composite architecture ensures syntactic correctness, preserves problem topology, and aligns with natural language objectives, while an evolutionary refinement process iteratively optimizes generated algorithm. Extensive evaluations across Mixed Integer Linear Programming and Boolean Satisfiability problems, using nine benchmark datasets, demonstrate that our proposed STRCMP outperforms five strong neural and LLM-based methods by a large margin, in terms of both solution optimality and computational efficiency. The code and learned model will be publicly available upon the acceptance of the paper.