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abstract indexed · arXiv 2610.18497 · updated 2026-10-18

Judges Follow the Reference: The Derivation Gap in Verifying Tool-Call Arguments

First page of Judges Follow the Reference: The Derivation Gap in Verifying Tool-Call Arguments
From the original paper · arXiv 2610.18497Page 1. Select the image to read the PDF.

DeRef replaces giving the judge raw (possibly truncated or reference-free) conversation history by having a separate model read the full history without seeing the candidate argument and write an explicit reference stating what the value should be. It costs one additional model inference per judged argument, adding latency, API or GPU cost, and a new pipeline component. It can fail when the reference-writing model itself misderives the intended value, since judges are shown to follow the visible reference even when it is incorrect, so a wrong reference can systematically flip verdicts.

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What you would change

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Try the idea on your product

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Compare against

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  1. Locate the paper's implementation and check its license, model support, data needs, and hardware requirements. Stop here if you cannot obtain the required artifacts.
  2. Save a small set of representative product tasks and expected outcomes. Keep evaluation tasks out of any training or tuning, and choose quality and cost limits before running.
  3. Run the baseline and the proposed change on identical inputs. Keep other settings fixed and repeat paired runs to expose variation.
  4. Save per-task outputs, failures, timings, and all usage costs. Review regressions before expanding the test.

What to measure

Agreement with human review, missed failures, false alarms, and evaluation cost per task.

When to keep it

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Why it was shortlisted

The technical change, research area, and reason it entered the archive.

recommendation
test
research area
agent evaluation
technical change
Derived-reference generation for tool-call judges
published
2026-10-13

The pattern is deployable on constrained infrastructure (one extra small-model or API call) and addresses a documented judge failure mode, but the AUROC gains come from the paper's benchmarks and controlled test, so the reader should validate on their own tool-call workload before relying on it in production.

About the technical core

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Claims and evidence

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  1. claim 01Paperraft inference
    Read the brief interpretation

    DeRef replaces giving the judge raw (possibly truncated or reference-free) conversation history by having a separate model read the full history without seeing the candidate argument and write an explicit reference stating what the value should be. It costs one additional model inference per judged argument, adding latency, API or GPU cost, and a new pipeline component. It can fail when the reference-writing model itself misderives the intended value, since judges are shown to follow the visible reference even when it is incorrect, so a wrong reference can systematically flip verdicts.

    This is a Paperraft inference. It is not pinned to a verified PDF passage.

    Inspect the source
  2. claim 02Paperraft inference

    DeRef improves argument AUROC for all judges tested across three benchmarks, and raises AUROC from chance or below to between 98.40 and 99.59 on a controlled source-relocation test.

    This is a Paperraft inference. It is not pinned to a verified PDF passage.

    Inspect the source

Exposure map

Author findings, Paperraft interpretations, and the next check. Missing analysis never counts as evidence of safety.

quality

Still unknown

Which tasks improve, and which regress against the baseline?

compute and memory

Still unknown

What memory, hardware, and total compute does the complete method require?

latency

Still unknown

Are startup time, typical response time, and slow requests measured separately?

operations

Still unknown

What must be monitored, maintained, and rolled back?

software compatibility

Still unknown

Does the implementation support your model, runtime, and hardware?

security

Still unknown

What new data access, permissions, or trust boundaries does it introduce?

data and training

Still unknown

What data preparation or training is required, and is it included in the cost?

reproducibility

Still unknown

Are code, versions, inputs, and evaluation scripts available?

Continue the investigation

A reading guide for agent evaluation.

Editorial prompts, not findings from this paper or a validated test plan. Detailed analysis is still pending for the topics below.

What to inspect

Who grades the outputs? Inspect the rubric, disagreements, and whether the evaluator sees the method's identity.

Plan a fair comparison

Can you apply the same tasks and rubric to the baseline and candidate, then review disagreements by hand?

Questions for adoption

Are the results stable across prompts, languages, and task categories relevant to your product?

Read the paper with these questions

Inside the paper

Preview the first 3 pages of the original PDF. Click the stack to turn the page.

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Provisional research brief updated 2026-10-18. Paperraft has not reproduced this experiment.

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arXiv 2610.18497

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