LightThinker++: From Reasoning Compression to Memory Management

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhu, Yuqi, Zhang, Jintian, Wan, Zhenjie, Luo, Yujie, Qiao, Shuofei, Gui, Zhengke, Zheng, Da, Liang, Lei, Chen, Huajun, Zhang, Ningyu
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Zhu, Yuqi
Zhang, Jintian
Wan, Zhenjie
Luo, Yujie
Qiao, Shuofei
Gui, Zhengke
Zheng, Da
Liang, Lei
Chen, Huajun
Zhang, Ningyu
author_facet Zhu, Yuqi
Zhang, Jintian
Wan, Zhenjie
Luo, Yujie
Qiao, Shuofei
Gui, Zhengke
Zheng, Da
Liang, Lei
Chen, Huajun
Zhang, Ningyu
contents Large language models (LLMs) excel at complex reasoning, yet their efficiency is limited by the surging cognitive overhead of long thought traces. In this paper, we propose LightThinker, a method that enables LLMs to dynamically compress intermediate thoughts into compact semantic representations. However, static compression often struggles with complex reasoning where the irreversible loss of intermediate details can lead to logical bottlenecks. To address this, we evolve the framework into LightThinker++, introducing Explicit Adaptive Memory Management. This paradigm shifts to behavioral-level management by incorporating explicit memory primitives, supported by a specialized trajectory synthesis pipeline to train purposeful memory scheduling. Extensive experiments demonstrate the framework's versatility across three dimensions. (1) LightThinker reduces peak token usage by 70% and inference time by 26% with minimal accuracy loss. (2) In standard reasoning, LightThinker++ slashes peak token usage by 69.9% while yielding a +2.42% accuracy gain under the same context budget for maximum performance. (3) Most notably, in long-horizon agentic tasks, it maintains a stable footprint beyond 80 rounds (a 60%-70% reduction), achieving an average performance gain of 14.8% across different complex scenarios. Overall, our work provides a scalable direction for sustaining deep LLM reasoning over extended horizons with minimal overhead.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_03679
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LightThinker++: From Reasoning Compression to Memory Management
Zhu, Yuqi
Zhang, Jintian
Wan, Zhenjie
Luo, Yujie
Qiao, Shuofei
Gui, Zhengke
Zheng, Da
Liang, Lei
Chen, Huajun
Zhang, Ningyu
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
Multimedia
Large language models (LLMs) excel at complex reasoning, yet their efficiency is limited by the surging cognitive overhead of long thought traces. In this paper, we propose LightThinker, a method that enables LLMs to dynamically compress intermediate thoughts into compact semantic representations. However, static compression often struggles with complex reasoning where the irreversible loss of intermediate details can lead to logical bottlenecks. To address this, we evolve the framework into LightThinker++, introducing Explicit Adaptive Memory Management. This paradigm shifts to behavioral-level management by incorporating explicit memory primitives, supported by a specialized trajectory synthesis pipeline to train purposeful memory scheduling. Extensive experiments demonstrate the framework's versatility across three dimensions. (1) LightThinker reduces peak token usage by 70% and inference time by 26% with minimal accuracy loss. (2) In standard reasoning, LightThinker++ slashes peak token usage by 69.9% while yielding a +2.42% accuracy gain under the same context budget for maximum performance. (3) Most notably, in long-horizon agentic tasks, it maintains a stable footprint beyond 80 rounds (a 60%-70% reduction), achieving an average performance gain of 14.8% across different complex scenarios. Overall, our work provides a scalable direction for sustaining deep LLM reasoning over extended horizons with minimal overhead.
title LightThinker++: From Reasoning Compression to Memory Management
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03679