{"paper":{"title":"Idea Search: Guiding Tree Search with Ideas to Explore Diverse Scientific Methods","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","q-bio.GN","q-bio.QM"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Hao Cui, Michael P. Brenner, Subhashini Venugopalan, Xuefei Julie Wang","submitted_at":"2026-08-09T23:31:57Z","abstract_excerpt":"Tree Search-based test-time scaling of LLMs is a powerful tool for automated scientific coding. However, pure Tree Search sometimes struggles with systematic exploration, becoming trapped in local optima, or unproductive loops, especially in the vast search space of scientific methods. To address this limitation, we propose Idea Search, a framework that systematically integrates a dynamic \"Idea Bank\" into Tree Search. Idea Search involves three steps: (1) decomposing existing methods into atomic ideas, (2) sampling from this bank of ideas to guide branches of code mutations, and (3) dynamicall"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2608.08958","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/2608.08958/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"}