2024/09/16 by Yifan Zhang, Yang Yuan, Zhang, Yifan +3 · 2 voices · 3 citations
Computer Science · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #cs.AI #cs.CL #cs.LG
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.10038
arxiv published 2024/09/16 · arxiv updated 2026/05/14
Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at many tasks but often falter on complex problems that require structured, multi-step reasoning. We introduce the Diagram of Thought (DoT), a framework that enables a single LLM to build and navigate a mental map of its reasoning. Instead of thinking in a straight line, the model constructs a dynamic diagram of ideas, where it can propose different lines of thought, critique its own steps, and synthesize validated insights into a final conclusion. This process is controller-light: it does not require an external search algorithm or planner, but it does use a deterministic online validator for grammar-constrained typed traces, register constraints, and optional solver checks. To clarify the reliability target of this process, we ground DoT in a mathematical framework from category theory. We interpret accepted typed reasoning records as diagrams in a slice topos and model synthesis of the selected proposer subdiagram as a finite limit. In the predicate fragment, this same object is equivalently a variance-reversed colimit in the opposite information order. The resulting formalism gives an auditable, step-by-step trace of the LLM's typed reasoning and separates semantic guarantees for the typed subtrace from unconstrained natural-language text and uncertified operational edges.