ProofWright: Towards Agentic Formal Verification of CUDA
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used to automatically generate optimized CUDA kernels, substantially improving developer productivity. However, despite rapid generation, these kernels often contain subtle correctness bugs and lack formal safety guarantees. Runtime testing is inherently unreliable - limited input coverage and reward hacking can mask incorrect behavior - while manual formal verification is reliable but cannot scale to match LLM output rates, creating a critical validation bottleneck. We present ProofWright, an agentic verification framework that bridges this gap by integrating automated formal verification with LLM-based code generation. ProofWright provides end-to-end guarantees of memory safety, thread safety, and semantic correctness for LLM-generated CUDA kernels. On KernelBench L1, ProofWright verifies safety properties for 74% of generated kernels, uncovers subtle correctness errors missed by conventional testing, and establishes semantic equivalence for a class of element-wise kernels. With a modest overhead of 3 minutes per kernel, ProofWright demonstrates that scalable, automated formal verification of LLM-generated GPU code is feasible - offering a path toward trustworthy high-performance code generation without sacrificing developer productivity.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 13 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2025.
Builds on
13 of 43 references.
References · 13
- 2025KernelBench: Can LLMs Write Efficient GPU Kernels?cited by 225
- 2023Clover: Closed-Loop Verifiable Code Generationcited by 67
- 2024Towards AI-Assisted Synthesis of Verified Dafny Methodscited by 58
- 2024AutoVerus: Automated Proof Generation for Rust Codecited by 49
- 2024AlphaVerus: Bootstrapping Formally Verified Code Generation through Self-Improving Translation and Treefinementcited by 35
- 2024EffiLearner: Enhancing Efficiency of Generated Code via Self-Optimizationcited by 30
- 2024LLM-Vectorizer: LLM-based Verified Loop Vectorizercited by 25
- 2024PerfCodeGen: Improving Performance of LLM Generated Code with Execution Feedbackcited by 24
- 2025Saarthi: The First AI Formal Verification Engineercited by 8
- 2025Dafny as Verification-Aware Intermediate Language for Code Generationcited by 6
- 2025A Case Study on the Effectiveness of LLMs in Verification with Proof Assistantscited by 3
- 2014Permission-Based Separation Logic for Multithreaded Java Programscited by 1
1 more
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026Reward Hacking in the Era of Large Models: Mechanisms, Emergent Misalignment, Challengescited by 33
- 2026Security in the Age of AI Teammates: An Empirical Study of Agentic Pull Requests on GitHubcited by 7
- 2026M2K: Making the Model-Kernel Interface Explicit for Reliable CUDA Kernel Verificationcited by 0
- 2026Ave: Guiding Agentic GPU Optimization Using Data-Flow Invariantscited by 0
- 2026Don't Regenerate, Debug: A Domain-Specific Agent for Repairing Near-Miss Hardware Operatorscited by 0
- 2026PTXBench: Benchmarking and Adapting LLMs for GPU Kernel Optimization with Architecture-specific PTXcited by 0
- 2026MAGS: Multi-agent Auto-formalization Guarantees Safety for Agentic Outputscited by 0
- 2026The Output-Space Hypothesis: Enumerative Equivalence Checking for Tensor Programscited by 0
- 2026RESOLVE: Language-Agnostic Validation of GPU Kernels Through Testing, Reduction, and Proofcited by 0
- 2026RESOLVE: Language-Agnostic Validation of GPU Kernels Through Testing, Reduction, and Proof5 Oct 2026
- 2026The Output-Space Hypothesis: Enumerative Equivalence Checking for Tensor Programs17 Sep 2026
- 2026MAGS: Multi-agent Auto-formalization Guarantees Safety for Agentic Outputs16 Sep 2026
- 2026PTXBench: Benchmarking and Adapting LLMs for GPU Kernel Optimization with Architecture-specific PTX18 Aug 2026
- 2026Don't Regenerate, Debug: A Domain-Specific Agent for Repairing Near-Miss Hardware Operators3 Aug 2026
- 2026Ave: Guiding Agentic GPU Optimization Using Data-Flow Invariants16 Apr 2026
- 2026Reward Hacking in the Era of Large Models: Mechanisms, Emergent Misalignment, Challenges15 Apr 2026
- 2026M2K: Making the Model-Kernel Interface Explicit for Reliable CUDA Kernel Verification6 Mar 2026
- 2026Security in the Age of AI Teammates: An Empirical Study of Agentic Pull Requests on GitHub1 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Towards Robust Agentic CUDA Kernel Benchmarking, Verification, and Optimization
- 2026CUDA-Harness: Harnessing Agentic CUDA Kernel Generation and Optimization from Natural Language
- 2026AgentCompile: An LLM-Guided Compiler for Direct CUDA Inference
- 2026Kernel Forge: An Agent Harness for LLM-based Generation and Optimization of CUDA Kernels
- 2026OptiML: An End-to-End Framework for Program Synthesis and CUDA Kernel Optimization
- 2026KernelBench-Verified: Do LLM-Generated Kernels Actually Beat PyTorch?
- 2026From Tokens to Regions: CUDA-Sensitive Instruction Tuning for GPU Kernel Generation
- 2025From Large to Small: Transferring CUDA Optimization Expertise via Reasoning Graph