HybridProver: Augmenting Theorem Proving with LLM-Driven Proof Synthesis and Refinement

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Jilin, Zhang, Jianyu, Zhao, Yongwang, Ringer, Talia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hu, Jilin
Zhang, Jianyu
Zhao, Yongwang
Ringer, Talia
author_facet Hu, Jilin
Zhang, Jianyu
Zhao, Yongwang
Ringer, Talia
contents Formal methods is pivotal for verifying the reliability of critical systems through rigorous mathematical proofs. However, its adoption is hindered by labor-intensive manual proofs and the expertise required to use theorem provers. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) offer new opportunities for automated theorem proving. Two promising approaches are generating tactics step by step and generating a whole proof directly with an LLM. However, existing work makes no attempt to combine the two approaches. In this work, we introduce HybridProver, a dual-model proof synthesis framework that combines tactic-based generation and whole-proof synthesis to harness the benefits of both approaches. HybridProver generates whole proof candidates for evaluation directly, then extracts proof sketches from those candidates. It then uses a tactic-based generation model that integrates automated tools to complete the sketches via stepwise refinement. We implement HybridProver for the Isabelle theorem prover and fine-tune LLMs on our optimized Isabelle datasets. Evaluation on the miniF2F dataset illustrates HybridProver's effectiveness. We achieve a 59.4% success rate on miniF2F, where the previous SOTA is 56.1%. Our ablation studies show that this SOTA result is attributable to combining whole-proof and tactic-based generation. Additionally, we show how the dataset quality, training parameters, and sampling diversity affect the final result during automated theorem proving with LLMs. All of our code, datasets, and LLMs are open source.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_15740
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle HybridProver: Augmenting Theorem Proving with LLM-Driven Proof Synthesis and Refinement
Hu, Jilin
Zhang, Jianyu
Zhao, Yongwang
Ringer, Talia
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Artificial Intelligence
Software Engineering
Formal methods is pivotal for verifying the reliability of critical systems through rigorous mathematical proofs. However, its adoption is hindered by labor-intensive manual proofs and the expertise required to use theorem provers. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) offer new opportunities for automated theorem proving. Two promising approaches are generating tactics step by step and generating a whole proof directly with an LLM. However, existing work makes no attempt to combine the two approaches. In this work, we introduce HybridProver, a dual-model proof synthesis framework that combines tactic-based generation and whole-proof synthesis to harness the benefits of both approaches. HybridProver generates whole proof candidates for evaluation directly, then extracts proof sketches from those candidates. It then uses a tactic-based generation model that integrates automated tools to complete the sketches via stepwise refinement. We implement HybridProver for the Isabelle theorem prover and fine-tune LLMs on our optimized Isabelle datasets. Evaluation on the miniF2F dataset illustrates HybridProver's effectiveness. We achieve a 59.4% success rate on miniF2F, where the previous SOTA is 56.1%. Our ablation studies show that this SOTA result is attributable to combining whole-proof and tactic-based generation. Additionally, we show how the dataset quality, training parameters, and sampling diversity affect the final result during automated theorem proving with LLMs. All of our code, datasets, and LLMs are open source.
title HybridProver: Augmenting Theorem Proving with LLM-Driven Proof Synthesis and Refinement
topic Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Artificial Intelligence
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15740