{"paper":{"title":"Operational Proto-Introspection in Looped Language Models: Process-Quality Taps, Executable Branching, and the Readout-Control Boundary","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Jan Kirin","submitted_at":"2026-07-20T22:40:36Z","abstract_excerpt":"Can a language model read the quality of ongoing computation, and can an external intervention turn that readout into better outcomes? We test both questions in a frozen 2.6B looped transformer, Ouro-RLTT. On GSM8K, a strict pre-answer probe excludes the answer region and gold value yet predicts eventual success: hidden states plus length and log-probability shortcuts reach AUROC 0.797, versus 0.731 for the shortcuts alone (incremental +0.066; task-clustered 95% CI [+0.021, +0.112]; 170 tasks, 680 candidates). Low-capacity taps also read role-specialized properties: task-disjoint branch surviv"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.18553","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.18553/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}