# A Stepwise-Enhanced Reasoning Framework for Large Language Models Based on External Subgraph Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23356 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23356/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 6 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [StructGPT: A General Framework for Large Language Model to Reason over Structured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09645/) (2023)
- [GreaseLM: Graph REASoning Enhanced Language Models for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08860/) (2022)
- [Open Question Answering over Tables and Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.10439/) (2020)
- [Knowledge-Augmented Language Model Prompting for Zero-Shot Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04136/) (2023)
- [Multi-step Retriever-Reader Interaction for Scalable Open-domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05733/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance across a wide range of natural language processing tasks in recent years, including machine translation, text generation, and question answering. As their applications extend to increasingly complex scenarios, however, LLMs continue to face challenges in tasks that require deep reasoning and logical inference. In particular, models trained on large scale textual corpora may incorporate noisy or irrelevant information during generation, which can lead to incorrect predictions or outputs that are inconsistent with factual knowledge. To address this limitation, we propose a stepwise reasoning enhancement framework for LLMs based on external subgraph generation, termed SGR. The proposed framework dynamically constructs query relevant subgraphs from external knowledge bases and leverages their semantic structure to guide the reasoning process. By performing reasoning in a step by step manner over structured subgraphs, SGR reduces the influence of noisy information and improves reasoning accuracy. Specifically, the framework first generates an external subgraph tailored to the input query, then guides the model to conduct multi step reasoning grounded in the subgraph, and finally integrates multiple reasoning paths to produce the final answer. Experimental results on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that SGR consistently outperforms strong baselines, indicating its effectiveness in enhancing the reasoning capabilities of LLMs.