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Bottom line: Using one language model to check another makes the check as fallible as the thing it checks. VeriClust proposes formal verification instead, with a proof certificate for each accepted result. This is a research proposal: the system has not been built and the paper reports no results.

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Full text (06_VeriClust.pdf) and versions on Zenodo.

Key points

  • Independent Proposers generate candidate solutions.
  • Verifiers check them with formal tools: model checking, SMT solving and proof assistants.
  • An Arbiter combines verdicts with a reputation-weighted threshold vote.
  • An Auditor keeps a tamper-evident log and issues a proof certificate for each accepted result.
  • The paper gives conditions under which the weighted vote cannot accept an invalid proposal and does accept a valid one, and sets out an experimental design on mathematical reasoning, software verification and fact-checking benchmarks.

Limitations

The system has not been built and no experiment has been run. The experimental section describes what will be measured and states no expected effect sizes.

Abstract

Language-model agents are being used for tasks where a wrong answer is costly, yet their outputs are probabilistic and their reasoning is hard to audit. Other language models are often used to check their work, which makes the check as fallible as the thing it checks. We propose VeriClust, a multi-agent architecture in which independent Proposers generate candidate solutions, Verifiers check them with formal tools (model checking, SMT solving and proof assistants), an Arbiter combines the verdicts with a reputation-weighted threshold vote, and an Auditor keeps a tamper-evident log and issues a proof certificate for each accepted result. We state the protocol, give conditions under which a weighted vote cannot accept an invalid proposal and does accept a valid one, and set out an experimental design on mathematical reasoning, software verification and fact-checking benchmarks. This paper is a research proposal. We have not built the system or run any experiment, and it reports no empirical results. The experimental section describes what we plan to measure, and states no expected effect sizes.
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Last modified on November 15, 2026