Verify Before You Commit: Towards Faithful Reasoning in LLM Agents via Self-Auditing
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code
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Abstract (arXiv)
In large language model (LLM) agents, reasoning trajectories are treated as reliable internal beliefs for guiding actions and updating memory. However, coherent reasoning can still violate logical or evidential constraints, allowing unsupported beliefs repeatedly stored and propagated across decision steps, leading to systematic behavioral drift in long-horizon agentic systems. Most existing strategies rely on the consensus mechanism, conflating agreement with faithfulness. In this paper, inspired by the vulnerability of unfaithful intermediate reasoning trajectories, we propose Self-Audited Verified Reasoning (textscSAVeR), a novel framework that enforces verification over internal belief states within the agent before action commitment, achieving faithful reasoning. Concretely, we structurally generate persona-based diverse candidate beliefs for selection under a faithfulness-relevant structure space. To achieve reasoning faithfulness, we perform adversarial auditing to localize violations and repair through constraint-guided minimal interventions under verifiable acceptance criteria. Extensive experiments on six benchmark datasets demonstrate that our approach consistently improves reasoning faithfulness while preserving competitive end-task performance.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 8 of its 58 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2026.
Builds on
8 of 58 references.
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Other references · 7
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- 2025A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Modelscited by 21
- 2025QA-Dragon: Query-Aware Dynamic RAG System for Knowledge-Intensive Visual Question Answeringcited by 6
- 2025Multi-agent Undercover Gaming: Hallucination Removal via Counterfactual Test for Multimodal Reasoningcited by 4
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026OpenClawBench: Benchmarking Process-side Anomalies in Real-world Agent Execution Trajectoriescited by 4
- 2026When Stale Constraints Go Unchecked: Budgeted Verification Failures in Inherited Agent Memorycited by 3
- 2026Belief-Guided Inference Control for Large Language Model Services via Verifiable Observationscited by 1
- 2026CogEEGAgent: Toward Autonomous Cognitive EEG Analysis with Grounded Execution and Selection-Aware Verificationcited by 1
- 2026Towards an Agent Operating System - Lessons from Classical and Cloud OScited by 1
- 2026Theoria: Rewrite-Acceptability Verification over Informal Reasoning Statescited by 0
- 2026What Do Rationales Communicate? A Message-Intervention Study in Role-Specialized QAcited by 0
- 2026When Stale Constraints Go Unchecked: Budgeted Verification Failures in Inherited Agent Memory26 Aug 2026
- 2026What Do Rationales Communicate? A Message-Intervention Study in Role-Specialized QA27 Jul 2026
- 2026Towards an Agent Operating System - Lessons from Classical and Cloud OS27 Jul 2026
- 2026CogEEGAgent: Toward Autonomous Cognitive EEG Analysis with Grounded Execution and Selection-Aware Verification27 Jul 2026
- 2026Theoria: Rewrite-Acceptability Verification over Informal Reasoning States1 Jul 2026
- 2026OpenClawBench: Benchmarking Process-side Anomalies in Real-world Agent Execution Trajectories28 May 2026
- 2026Belief-Guided Inference Control for Large Language Model Services via Verifiable Observations30 Apr 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
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- 2025Deception in LLMs: Self-Preservation and Autonomous Goals in Large Language Models
- 2026Doing What They Say, Not What They Reason: Locating the Faithfulness Gap in LLM Agents
- 2025SIEVE: Selective Integrity Verification and Escalation for Defending LLM Agents against Indirect Prompt Injection
- 2025From Solving to Verifying: A Unified Objective for Robust Reasoning in LLMs
- 2026Can We Break LLMs Out of Self-Loops? Fine-Grained Reasoning Control with Activation Steering
- 2025Trust, But Verify: A Self-Verification Approach to Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards