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HFEPX · Eval paper review

ThinkFuse: Trajectory-Aware Test-Time Fusion for Small Reasoning Models

Myunghoon Kang, Jungseob Lee, Jaehyung Seo, Heuiseok Lim

Published

Oct 6, 2026

Citations

0

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 (Low)

Extraction confidence

15% (Low)

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Rater population

Not reported

Signals refreshed

Oct 6, 2026

Should you rely on this paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Human feedback signal
Not explicit
Not explicit in abstract metadata
Evaluation signal
Detected
Eval setup described
Usefulness for eval research
0/100
Adjacent candidate

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Abstract

Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path. Existing test-time fusion methods rely on local fusion signals to determine when to trigger fusion, which can be misled by transient uncertainty fluctuations and may reinforce unstable reasoning trajectories. We propose ThinkFuse, a training-free test-time fusion framework that selectively intervenes in unreliable reasoning segments. ThinkFuse compares segment-level uncertainty shifts with trajectory-level uncertainty trends to identify unstable reasoning points and fuse auxiliary reasoning paths into the primary model's trajectory. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ThinkFuse outperforms baselines on mathematical and knowledge-intensive reasoning benchmarks, with consistent gains across model-family combinations, and remains robust with a smaller primary model. Our analysis shows that ThinkFuse requires fewer fusion triggers and generates fewer tokens, highlighting the efficiency of selective triggering. Our code is available at https://github.com/js-lee-AI/ThinkFuse.

What we could verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path."

Benchmarks and datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Human feedback details
Uses human feedback
No
Feedback types
None
Rater population
Not reported
Unit of annotation
Trajectory (inferred)
Expertise required
Math, Coding
Evaluation details
Evaluation modes
None
Agentic eval
Long Horizon
Quality controls
Not reported
Evidence quality
Low
Use this page as
Background context only

Research brief

Metadata summary

Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key takeaways

  • Small reasoning models (SRMs) have shown strong performance on complex reasoning tasks by generating extended chain-of-thought trajectories, but they often fail to recover once their reasoning enters an erroneous path.
  • Existing test-time fusion methods rely on local fusion signals to determine when to trigger fusion, which can be misled by transient uncertainty fluctuations and may reinforce unstable reasoning trajectories.
  • We propose ThinkFuse, a training-free test-time fusion framework that selectively intervenes in unreliable reasoning segments.

Researcher actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended queries

Contribution summary

  • We propose ThinkFuse, a training-free test-time fusion framework that selectively intervenes in unreliable reasoning segments.
  • Extensive experiments demonstrate that ThinkFuse outperforms baselines on mathematical and knowledge-intensive reasoning benchmarks, with consistent gains across model-family combinations, and remains robust with a smaller primary model.

Why it matters for eval

  • Extensive experiments demonstrate that ThinkFuse outperforms baselines on mathematical and knowledge-intensive reasoning benchmarks, with consistent gains across model-family combinations, and remains robust with a smaller primary model.

Researcher checklist

  • Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.