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cs.LG / cs.AI / cs.CL · 2608.12307 · 2026/08/12

AI4AI at Test-Time: Strong-to-Weak Capability Transfer via Harnesses

Qian, Cheng, Zhao, Wenting, Yang, Liangwei, Wang, Heng, Qiu, Jielin, Ji, Heng, Savarese, Silvio, Wang, Huan
TL;DR:强到弱能力迁移可以发生在测试时而非训练时:强builder模型构建推理时harness,无需任何参数更新就让弱模型性能近乎翻倍(ToM平均0.49→0.91),增益主要来自把不稳定推理卸载进确定性代码与严格格式约束。

🎯 问题

蒸馏通常在训练时更新目标模型参数(teacher forcing/on-policy distillation),能否在测试时迁移能力?

🔬 方法

strong-to-weak scaffolding:builder用5%数据作验证集迭代精炼harness,最终harness在全集评估;4个Theory-of-Mind基准×多模型组合。
章节结构(全文标题提取):
1 Introduction
2 Related Work
3 Method
4 Experimental Setup
5 Results and Analysis
6 Synthesis and Conclusion
7 Discussion and Future Work
References
5.1 Aspect 0: Main Results
5.2 Aspect 1: Run-to-Run Stability
5.3 Aspect 2: Refinement on Validation
5.4 Aspect 3: Scaffolding Techniques
5.5 Aspect 4: Harness Platform’s Impact
5.6 Aspect 5: Analysis Across Target Models
5.7 Aspect 6: Builder Reasoning Effort
5.8 Aspect 7: Attribution of Why Does Improvement Happen?
5.9 Aspect 8: Cognitive-Load Reduction
5.10 Aspect 9: Remaining Error Analysis

📊 结果

目标平均性能0.49→0.91近乎翻倍;增益来自卸载不稳定推理到确定性代码、基准特定路由、严格答案格式执行,而非让目标模型更广采样;builder推理努力单调提升harness质量;弱目标获益最大。

💡 与研究方向关联

测试时强到弱能力迁移:harness 设计让弱模型无参数更新性能近乎翻倍,增益来自卸载不稳定推理进确定性代码与严格格式。harness 与用户关注的 agent 架构(能力脚手架)高度相关。

📝 原文摘要

▶ 原文摘要 Abstract
Recent work on distillation transfers the capabilities of large models to smaller ones often by updating the latter's parameters, through teacher forcing, on-policy distillation, and related training-time methods. In this paper, we ask whether such transfer can instead occur at test time. We study strong-to-weak scaffolding: whether a stronger builder model can construct inference-time harnesses that help a weaker target model solve tasks more reliably without any parameter updates. Using four representative Theory-of-Mind benchmarks, each builder model uses 5% of the data as a validation set to iteratively refine its harness over multiple rounds, after which the finalized harness is evaluated on the full test set. Empirically, this form of test-time capability transfer is highly effective, nearly doubling average target-model performance from 0.49 to 0.91. Our analysis shows that the gains come primarily from offloading unstable model reasoning into deterministic code, benchmark-specific routing, and strict answer-format enforcement, rather than from encouraging the target model to reason more extensively or sample more broadly. We further find that builder-model reasoning effort improves harness quality monotonically, platform effects are modest relative to the builder model's own capability, and weaker target models receive the largest gains. These results suggest that inference-time harness design is an important complement to conventional training-time distillation, enabling strong models to transfer cognitive structure to weaker models without retraining.
Deep Read · 2026-08-14高松灯 / Agent 日报
Test-Time DistillationHarnessStrong-to-WeakInference-Time