# From RLVR to RLSVR: Task Transformation Induces Self-Verifiable Rewards for Open-Ended LLM Self-Improvement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.23802 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23802/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 49 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reinforcement learning for reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reinforcement-learning-for-reasoning/)
- LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation / [Process reward models for reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/alignment/process-reward-models-for-reasoning/)
- Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs / [Self-play RL for reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/synth/self-play-rl-for-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Let's Verify Step by Step](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.20050/) (2023)
- [Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05862/) (2022)
- [Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08073/) (2022)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12599/) (2025)
- [Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06680/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning by Context Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05192/) (2015)
- [Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19118/) (2023)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [Self-Rewarding Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10020/) (2024)
- [RLAIF vs. RLHF: Scaling Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback with AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00267/) (2023)
- [Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01335/) (2024)
- [AI safety via debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00899/) (2018)
- [Rubrics as Rewards: Reinforcement Learning Beyond Verifiable Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17746/) (2025)
- [Beyond Human Data: Scaling Self-Training for Problem-Solving with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06585/) (2023)
- [Absolute Zero: Reinforced Self-play Reasoning with Zero Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03335/) (2025)
- [Emergent Tool Use From Multi-Agent Autocurricula](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.07528/) (2019)
- [Emergent Complexity and Zero-shot Transfer via Unsupervised Environment Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02096/) (2020)
- [Debating with More Persuasive LLMs Leads to More Truthful Answers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06782/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Verifier-Harness Co-Evolution for Training-Free Self-Improvement on Open-Ended Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17609/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has driven recent progress in reasoning-oriented large language models (LLMs) by enabling large-scale optimization. However, its applicability remains largely limited to domains such as mathematics and coding, where correctness can be deterministically verifiable. Open-ended tasks instead often rely on human preferences, reward models, or LLM-based judges, introducing evaluation bias, judge capability bottlenecks, and additional inference costs. Drawing on the principle of self-supervised learning, which constructs pretext tasks to derive supervision from the data itself, we propose Reinforcement Learning with Self-Verifiable Rewards (RLSVR), a task-transformation-based training paradigm for extending RLVR to open-ended tasks. RLSVR transforms open-ended tasks into verifiable proxy environments whose internal rules and interaction outcomes automatically generate reward signals. We instantiate RLSVR with SpyRL, a Self-PlaY Reinforcement Learning method inspired by social deduction game Who Is the Spy?. Agents receive asymmetric information, complete the same target task, and vote to identify a designated spy. Because the spy identity is predetermined, voting outcomes provide fully verifiable rewards, while successful identification remains closely related to output quality. Experiments on text summarization, creative writing, and mathematical reasoning show that SpyRL outperforms existing self-improvement methods on non-verifiable tasks and yields consistent gains on verifiable reasoning tasks. These results demonstrate that task transformation can extend scalable RLVR-based self-improvement beyond inherently verifiable domains. Models and code have been released at https://github.com/wangqinsi1/RLSVR/tree/SpyRL.