English

StepFun-Formalizer: Unlocking the Autoformalization Potential of LLMs through Knowledge-Reasoning Fusion

Computation and Language 2025-12-29 v3 Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning

Abstract

Autoformalization aims to translate natural-language mathematical statements into a formal language. While LLMs have accelerated progress in this area, existing methods still suffer from low accuracy. We identify two key abilities for effective autoformalization: comprehensive mastery of formal-language domain knowledge, and reasoning capability of natural language problem understanding and informal-formal alignment. Without the former, a model cannot identify the correct formal objects; without the latter, it struggles to interpret real-world contexts and map them precisely into formal expressions. To address these gaps, we introduce ThinkingF, a data synthesis and training pipeline that improves both abilities. First, we construct two datasets: one by distilling and selecting large-scale examples rich in formal knowledge, and another by generating informal-to-formal reasoning trajectories guided by expert-designed templates. We then apply SFT and RLVR with these datasets to further fuse and refine the two abilities. The resulting 7B and 32B models exhibit both comprehensive formal knowledge and strong informal-to-formal reasoning. Notably, StepFun-Formalizer-32B achieves SOTA BEq@1 scores of 40.5% on FormalMATH-Lite and 26.7% on ProverBench, surpassing all prior general-purpose and specialized models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.04440,
  title  = {StepFun-Formalizer: Unlocking the Autoformalization Potential of LLMs through Knowledge-Reasoning Fusion},
  author = {Yutong Wu and Di Huang and Ruosi Wan and Yue Peng and Shijie Shang and Chenrui Cao and Lei Qi and Rui Zhang and Zidong Du and Jie Yan and Xing Hu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.04440},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

AAAI 2026 Oral. Extended version with full appendix, 25 pages, 17 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:37:23.990Z