# Governance Records as Supervision: Verifier-Selected Self-Training for Structured Workflow Repair

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18324 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18324/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10560/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models Cannot Self-Correct Reasoning Yet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01798/) (2023)
- [Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debug](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05128/) (2023)
- [Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01335/) (2024)
- [Scaling Relationship on Learning Mathematical Reasoning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01825/) (2023)
- [PlanBench: An Extensible Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models on Planning and Reasoning about Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10498/) (2022)
- [CodeRL: Mastering Code Generation through Pretrained Models and Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01780/) (2022)
- [On the Planning Abilities of Large Language Models : A Critical Investigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15771/) (2023)
- [LEVER: Learning to Verify Language-to-Code Generation with Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08468/) (2023)
- [On the Self-Verification Limitations of Large Language Models on Reasoning and Planning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08115/) (2024)
- [Correct Is Not Governed: Provenance Integrity in Agentic Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12761/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Machine-verifiable workflows produce governance records linking a task contract, model attempt, verifier decision, accepted output, and target origin. We test whether verifier-admitted outputs can supervise a bounded model by consolidating occasional or expensive capability into reliable one-shot execution. On fresh, structure-disjoint PlanBench replanning cases, Qwen3-14B thinking produced 24 plans admitted by independently authored VAL. They trained the same checkpoint for non-thinking execution, without oracle targets or a stronger teacher. VAL acceptance rose from 1/80 to 57/80. A prospective replication held targets, model revision, recipe, and evaluation corpus fixed across eight LoRA seeds and three inference realizations per seed. Every seed produced a clear lift: adapters reached 45/80 to 70/80 against 1/80 for every matched base report; the exact seed-level sign-flip test gave p=0.0078125. Target-selection performance was less stable. An initial matched seed gave 102/160 accepted plans after VAL selection versus 69/160 after blinded model self-selection. Across eight prospective seeds, the contrast was seed-dependent, included one clear reverse seed, and did not replicate (p=0.3672). VAL also had a positive descriptive aggregate over schema-only selection but failed its preregistered seed-level reliability gate (p=0.0703). The verifier remains the admission authority; no reliable downstream capability advantage of semantic selection is established. A complementary Phi arm supports stronger-teacher distillation. Earlier synthetic studies bound teachability, cumulative learning, transfer, and stopping. The evidence supports robust consolidation of one fixed, machine-checkable capability, not arbitrary planning, enterprise validity, or unrestricted self-improvement.