REVIEW 4 major objections 4 minor 33 references
Simplifying Formal Proof-Generating Models with ChatGPT and Basic Searching Techniques
T0 review · 4 major / 4 minor · reviewed 2026-08-09 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read By pairing an off-the-shelf language model with two simple proof-search strategies, the paper claims a 31.15% pass rate on the miniF2F benchmark—higher than every published single-attempt prover it compares with except one that uses a far…
desk verdict A simple ChatGPT+search baseline that's competitive but overclaims: ignore the 'surpasses all benchmarks' line, the real story is a reproducible no-fine-tuning setup with decent results and honest caveats. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The load-bearing mechanism is the pairing of a greedy depth-first search with a failure-memory feedback set called Bad(O), originally proposed for COPRA and adapted so that it stores tactic-state and failed-tactic pairs rather than just failed tactics; when the d-search restarts from the initial state, it consults Bad(O) to avoid retrying known failures. Complementing this, the b-search generates 64 tactics per tactic state with deduplication and temperature control. The two searches are deliberately complementary: the breadth-first pass covers many tactic directions cheaply, while the depth-first pass with Bad(O) revisits the proof from scratch to find paths that the breadth-first pass misses. The 31.15% result is the union of their proofs under the k=1, n=64 and k=50, n=1 configurations.
What would settle it
Recompute the pass rate under a single, shared protocol—for example, k=1 with 64 tactic samples per state and no second 50-attempt depth-first pass—and compare it with the same protocol for the prior systems; if bChatLean alone (29.10%) falls below the previous best single-attempt result, then the 'surpasses all benchmarks' headline does not survive a matched-budget comparison.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
On its own terms, the paper's central discovery is that a fine-tuning-free ChatGPT model can reach state-of-the-art-level formal proof performance when paired with the right simple search. The b-search samples 64 tactics per Lean tactic state in a breadth-first style; the d-search samples one tactic greedily per attempt and, when it fails, restarts the whole proof from scratch, with a Bad(O) memory that records failed tactic-state/tactic pairs so it does not repeat them. Combining the two—bChatLean at k=1, n=64 and dChatLean+ at k=50, n=1—produces the 31.15% pass@k on miniF2F: 56 theorems solved by both, 15 only by bChatLean, and 5 only by dChatLean+. The paper also shows that 21 of the solved theorems were not in the recent miniF2F GitHub repository, indicating new proof artifacts. The authors take this as evidence that simple, reproducible models can be competitive with specialized theorem provers.
Load-bearing premise
The headline comparison assumes that the combined model's 31.15% pass@k, built from two runs with different attempt budgets (1 for bChatLean and 50 for dChatLean+), can be fairly compared with the pass@1 numbers reported for other systems, so that the paper's effective attempt budget is not much larger than theirs.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- If the 31.15% pass@k is correct and comparable, then a fine-tuning-free ChatGPT-based model is the best single-attempt-scale prover on miniF2F, ahead of specialized models like ReProver, DS-Prover, and COPRA.
- Because 21 solved theorems were absent from the miniF2F repository, the method is not merely memorizing published proofs and can contribute new formal proofs.
- The Llemma-based analogs (bLlemLean combined with dLlemLean+) reach 28.28%, beating Llemma's reported 26.23%, so the search algorithms transfer to a different base language model.
- On ProofNet the combined model proves 46 of 350 theorems (13.14%), and on 2023 AMC 12 problems published after ChatGPT's training it solves 23.07%, suggesting the approach works outside miniF2F and on unseen problems.
- The ablations show that raising temperature from 0.7 to 1.4 and increasing the number of attempts k improve pass rates, so output diversity is a first-order lever for this method.
Reading between the lines
- If the pass@k comparison is accepted, a corollary not drawn by the paper is that the incremental value of domain-specific fine-tuning and reinforcement learning may be smaller than commonly assumed, since search budget and prompt design can close much of the gap.
- The Bad(O) mechanism is essentially a tabu-style memory; extending it to rank or reweight remembered failures, or to forget failures after they become stale, is a natural testable next step that the paper does not explore.
- The 21 newly proved theorems imply the pipeline can act as a proof-artifact generator; a direct extension would be to run the same system on the full set of currently unproved miniF2F problems and publish the resulting Lean proofs.
- Because the headline comparison aggregates two unequal attempt budgets, a fairer benchmark would fix a single total sample budget per problem for all methods; the current design likely overstates the no-fine-tuning advantage.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper proposes two simple proof-search algorithms, b-search and d-search, that wrap ChatGPT (GPT-4/GPT-4 Turbo) without fine-tuning to generate Lean proofs. On the miniF2F test set, the best configuration, an ensemble of bChatLean (k=1, n=64) and dChatLean+ (k=50, n=1), is reported to achieve a 31.15% pass rate, with 76 of 244 theorems solved. Additional experiments cover ProofNet, 2023 AMC 12 problems, and a transfer to the Llemma model, along with ablations on temperature, the number of attempts k, and the Bad(O) feedback mechanism. The abstract claims that this result 'surpasses all known benchmarks,' but Section 4.2 and Table 1 show that HyperTree reaches 41.0% and that the paper's own text concedes this exception.
Significance. If the empirical results are correct, the paper makes a useful contribution by showing that a fine-tuning-free ChatGPT wrapper with simple breadth-first and depth-first search can reach levels of performance on miniF2F comparable to several specialized theorem-proving systems. The proofs are machine-checked by Lean, and the authors provide code, ablations, and a post-training-cutoff AMC 12 evaluation that partially addresses contamination concerns. These are real strengths. However, the headline claim of 'surpassing all known benchmarks' is contradicted by the paper's own Table 1, and the combined 31.15% figure is not a standard pass@k metric. The significance of the work therefore depends on whether the authors can reframe their contribution as 'competitive under a clearly specified search budget' rather than as a new state-of-the-art result.
major comments (4)
- [Abstract and §4.2, Table 1] The abstract states that 'our best-performing Lean-based model surpasses all known benchmarks with a 31.15% pass rate,' but Table 1 lists HyperTree at 41.0%, and §4.2 explicitly says the pass rate 'surpasses all values in Table 1 except for in the case of the HyperTree model.' This is an internal contradiction in the central claim of the paper. The authors should correct the abstract to match the paper's own results, for example by saying 'surpasses all previously reported pass@1 results' or by excluding HyperTree from the comparison.
- [§4.2, Table 1] The 31.15% figure is the union of two heterogeneous search policies: bChatLean with k=1, n=64, and dChatLean+ with k=50, n=1. A pass@k rate is defined as the proportion of problems solved within a fixed number k of attempts under a single policy. The union of a k=1 policy and a k=50 policy is therefore not a standard pass@k and is not directly comparable to the pass@1 entries for PACT, Expert Iteration, ReProver, DS-Prover, Llemma, and COPRA in the same table. The authors should either report a single-policy pass@1 for their models, or clearly label the combined result as an ensemble under an explicit total attempt budget and avoid comparing it with pass@1 values.
- [§5, 'Considering challenging problems', and §4.4] The paper directly acknowledges that the Bernoulli inequality problem was solved by calling the pre-existing theorem one_add_mul_le_pow and that 'the model may have leveraged prior exposure to the library during training.' This raises a legitimate concern that part of the miniF2F pass rate reflects memorization of standard benchmark problems rather than general proof-search capability. The AMC 12 evaluation in §4.4 is a good step toward addressing this, but it is limited to 26 problems. The authors should either strengthen the contamination-resistance evidence or temper the claim that the miniF2F result demonstrates a general proof-generation ability.
- [§4.4, 'On ProofNet'] The paper says the ProofNet result (13.14%) is 'comparable to established benchmarks,' but no prior ProofNet pass-rate baselines are given. Without such numbers, this claim is unsupported. The authors should either provide relevant comparisons from prior work or remove the word 'comparable.'
minor comments (4)
- [§4.2, Table 1] The sample-budget notation is confusing: the table uses expressions such as '1 × 8 × 512' for PACT, '64 × 5000' for HyperTree, and '1 × 64 × −' for bChatLean, but the text does not clearly define e for their own runs or explain why '−' appears only in their rows. A brief clarifying sentence would help.
- [§4.2] The sentence 'Since the two proof searches described above use separate strategies to find proofs, we expect that combining the two models will open up room for a wider range of tactics to explore' is a reasonable intuition, but the paper does not quantify the expected gain or test the combination against a simple 'double the k' baseline. A short discussion of this alternative would strengthen the ensemble result.
- [§4.4, 'Using Llemma'] The claim that bLlemLean & dLlemLean+ 'surpassing the benchmark of 26.23% previously reported for Llemma' is interesting, but the paper does not state the number of attempts k or the sample budget used for the Llemma experiments in Table 6. Without this information, the comparison to the Llemma baseline is not fully interpretable.
- [General] The paper uses the terms 'b-search' and 'd-search' without formally defining them as algorithms in pseudocode or a formal specification. Given that the main contribution is algorithmic, a concise pseudocode listing for b-search and d-search would improve reproducibility.
Circularity Check
No circular derivation: the 31.15% figure is an observed union of two search runs; concerns over the nonstandard pass@k label and possible pretraining exposure are benchmarking/validity issues, not self-referential reductions.
full rationale
This paper is an empirical benchmark study rather than a derivation, so the standard circularity patterns do not apply. The central result, 31.15%, is directly read off from running bChatLean and dChatLean+ on the 244 miniF2F test problems: the paper reports 56 theorems solved by both, 15 by bChatLean alone, and 5 by dChatLean+ alone, giving 76/244 = 31.15%. No fitted parameter is renamed as a prediction, no result is defined in terms of the claim it is supposed to support, and no load-bearing uniqueness theorem or self-citation chain is invoked. The legitimate concerns are comparability and reporting accuracy: the table labels the combined model as pass@k with k = '1 & 50', which is not a standard pass@k with a fixed number of attempts under one policy, and the abstract's statement that the model 'surpasses all known benchmarks' is contradicted by the same table's HyperTree row (41.0%). These are methodological weaknesses, not circularity. Likewise, the Bernoulli inequality discussion is an external-validity caveat about possible pretraining memorization, and the authors explicitly acknowledge it and compensate with post-cutoff AMC 12 problems; it does not make the reported pass rate a restatement of its own inputs. No circular step is therefore identifiable.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (4)
- temperature =
1.4
- number of attempts k =
50 (d-search)
- tactic samples n =
64 (b-search)
- number of few-shot examples =
5
assumptions (4)
- domain assumption Lean kernel and mathlib are sound
- domain assumption miniF2F formalizations correctly encode the intended informal problems
- ad hoc to paper ChatGPT has no differential access to miniF2F solutions through pretraining
- ad hoc to paper Combined pass@k is a meaningful comparability metric
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of Simplifying Formal Proof-Generating Models with ChatGPT and Basic Searching Techniques." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/B57BTCCN
@misc{pith2026250203321,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: Simplifying Formal Proof-Generating Models with ChatGPT and Basic Searching Techniques},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/B57BTCCN}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2502.03321}
}
read the original abstract
The challenge of formal proof generation has a rich history, but with modern techniques, we may finally be at the stage of making actual progress in real-life mathematical problems. This paper explores the integration of ChatGPT and basic searching techniques to simplify generating formal proofs, with a particular focus on the miniF2F dataset. We demonstrate how combining a large language model like ChatGPT with a formal language such as Lean, which has the added advantage of being verifiable, enhances the efficiency and accessibility of formal proof generation. Despite its simplicity, our best-performing Lean-based model surpasses all known benchmarks with a 31.15% pass rate. We extend our experiments to include other datasets and employ alternative language models, showcasing our models' comparable performance in diverse settings and allowing for a more nuanced analysis of our results. Our findings offer insights into AI-assisted formal proof generation, suggesting a promising direction for future research in formal mathematical proof.
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