Evolving Demonstration Optimization for Chain-of-Thought Feature Transformation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Xinyuan, Liu, Kunpeng, Malarkkan, Arun Vignesh, Fu, Yanjie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wang, Xinyuan
Liu, Kunpeng
Malarkkan, Arun Vignesh
Fu, Yanjie
author_facet Wang, Xinyuan
Liu, Kunpeng
Malarkkan, Arun Vignesh
Fu, Yanjie
contents Feature Transformation (FT) is a core data-centric AI task that improves feature space quality to advance downstream predictive performance. However, discovering effective transformations remains challenging due to the large space of feature-operator combinations. Existing solutions rely on discrete search or latent generation, but they are frequently limited by sample inefficiency, invalid candidates, and redundant generations with limited coverage. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer strong priors for producing valid transformations, but current LLM-based FT methods typically rely on static demonstrations, resulting in limited diversity, redundant outputs, and weak alignment with downstream objectives. We propose a framework that optimizes context data for LLM-driven FT by evolving trajectory-level experiences in a closed loop. Starting from high-performing feature transportation sequences explored by reinforcement learning, we construct and continuously update an experience library of downstream task-verified transformation trajectories, and use a diversity-aware selector to form contexts along with a chain-of-thought and guide transformed feature generation toward higher performance. Experiments on diverse tabular benchmarks show that our method outperforms classical and LLM-based baselines and is more stable than one-shot generation. The framework generalizes across API-based and open-source LLMs and remains robust across downstream evaluators.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09987
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolving Demonstration Optimization for Chain-of-Thought Feature Transformation
Wang, Xinyuan
Liu, Kunpeng
Malarkkan, Arun Vignesh
Fu, Yanjie
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Feature Transformation (FT) is a core data-centric AI task that improves feature space quality to advance downstream predictive performance. However, discovering effective transformations remains challenging due to the large space of feature-operator combinations. Existing solutions rely on discrete search or latent generation, but they are frequently limited by sample inefficiency, invalid candidates, and redundant generations with limited coverage. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer strong priors for producing valid transformations, but current LLM-based FT methods typically rely on static demonstrations, resulting in limited diversity, redundant outputs, and weak alignment with downstream objectives. We propose a framework that optimizes context data for LLM-driven FT by evolving trajectory-level experiences in a closed loop. Starting from high-performing feature transportation sequences explored by reinforcement learning, we construct and continuously update an experience library of downstream task-verified transformation trajectories, and use a diversity-aware selector to form contexts along with a chain-of-thought and guide transformed feature generation toward higher performance. Experiments on diverse tabular benchmarks show that our method outperforms classical and LLM-based baselines and is more stable than one-shot generation. The framework generalizes across API-based and open-source LLMs and remains robust across downstream evaluators.
title Evolving Demonstration Optimization for Chain-of-Thought Feature Transformation
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09987