English

Beyond the Black Box: Demystifying Multi-Turn LLM Reasoning with VISTA

Computation and Language 2025-11-14 v1

Abstract

Recent research has increasingly focused on the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in multi-turn interactions, as these scenarios more closely mirror real-world problem-solving. However, analyzing the intricate reasoning processes within these interactions presents a significant challenge due to complex contextual dependencies and a lack of specialized visualization tools, leading to a high cognitive load for researchers. To address this gap, we present VISTA, an web-based Visual Interactive System for Textual Analytics in multi-turn reasoning tasks. VISTA allows users to visualize the influence of context on model decisions and interactively modify conversation histories to conduct "what-if" analyses across different models. Furthermore, the platform can automatically parse a session and generate a reasoning dependency tree, offering a transparent view of the model's step-by-step logical path. By providing a unified and interactive framework, VISTA significantly reduces the complexity of analyzing reasoning chains, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding of the capabilities and limitations of current LLMs. The platform is open-source and supports easy integration of custom benchmarks and local models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.10182,
  title  = {Beyond the Black Box: Demystifying Multi-Turn LLM Reasoning with VISTA},
  author = {Yiran Zhang and Mingyang Lin and Mark Dras and Usman Naseem},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.10182},
  year   = {2025}
}