mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Towards an Agentic LLM-based Approach to Requirement Formalization from Unstructured Specifications

arXiv 2604.18228 ↗First posted 20 Apr 2026cs.SEcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Early-stage specifications of safety-critical systems are typically expressed in natural language, making it difficult to derive formal properties suitable for verification and needed to guarantee safety. While recent Large Language Model (LLM)-based approaches can generate formal artifacts from text, they mainly focus on syntactic correctness and do not ensure semantic alignment between informal requirements and formally verifiable properties. We propose an agentic methodology that automatically extracts verification-ready properties from unstructured specifications. The modular pipeline combines requirement extraction, compatibility filtering with respect to a target formalism, and translation into formal properties. Experimental results across three scenarios show that the pipeline generates syntactically and semantically aligned formal properties with a 77.8% accuracy. By explicitly accounting for modeling and verification constraints, the approach is a paving step towards exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to bridge the gap between informal descriptions and semantically meaningful formal verification.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 14 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Apr 2026.

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14 of 32 references.

References · 14

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  3. 2022Autoformalization with Large Language Modelscited by 252
  4. 2023nl2spec: Interactively Translating Unstructured Natural Language to Temporal Logics with Large Language Modelscited by 57
  5. 2024Enchanting Program Specification Synthesis by Large Language Models using Static Analysis and Program Verificationcited by 55
  6. 2019Specification Patterns for Robotic Missionscited by 16
  7. 2024Lessons from the Use of Natural Language Inference (NLI) in Requirements Engineering Taskscited by 12
  8. 2023Improving Requirements Completeness: Automated Assistance through Large Language Modelscited by 10
  9. 2025Large Language Models (LLMs) for Requirements Engineering (RE): A Systematic Literature Reviewcited by 9
  10. 2014Formal Consistency Checking over Specifications in Natural Languagescited by 8
  11. 2025Bridging Natural Language and Formal Specification--Automated Translation of Software Requirements to LTL via Hierarchical Semantics Decomposition Using LLMscited by 8
  12. 2025Leveraging LLMs for Formal Software Requirements -- Challenges and Prospectscited by 5
2 more
  1. 2025LLM-based Satisfiability Checking of String Requirements by Consistent Data and Checker Generationcited by 2
  2. 2026Automatic Generation of Formal Specification and Verification Annotations Using LLMs and Test Oraclescited by 2

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  4. 2026Verus-SpecGym: An Agentic Environment for Evaluating Specification Autoformalization
  5. 2026ClarifySTL: An Interactive LLM Agent Framework for STL Transformation through Requirements Clarification
  6. 2026From Obligation to Specification: A Survey on Validating EU AI Act Requirements in RE
  7. 2026Learning-Infused Formal Reasoning: From Contract Synthesis to Artifact Reuse and Formal Semantics
  8. 2026Agentic Model Checking