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ReIn: Conversational Error Recovery with Reasoning Inception
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ReIn: Conversational Error Recovery with Reasoning Inception

#ReIn #Reasoning Inception #Converse AI #Error recovery #Large language models #Test‑time intervention #Prompt‑modification #Instruction hierarchy #Dialogue systems

📌 Key Takeaways

  • ReIn introduces an external inception module that identifies predefined dialogue errors and generates recovery plans, which are integrated into the agent’s internal reasoning process;
  • The method operates entirely at test time, avoiding costly model fine‑tuning or prompt redesign;
  • Systematic evaluation on simulated failure scenarios (ambiguous or unsupported requests) shows significant improvements in task success and generalization to unseen error types;
  • ReIn consistently outperforms explicit prompt‑modification strategies, highlighting its efficiency;
  • Analysis of instruction hierarchy suggests that jointly defining recovery tools with ReIn offers a safe, effective way to enhance agent resilience;
  • The approach has been tested across diverse combinations of agent models and inception modules, indicating broad applicability.

📖 Full Retelling

WHO: Takyoung Kim, Jinseok Nam, Chandrayee Basu, Xing Fan, Chengyuan Ma, Heng Ji, Gokhan Tur, and Dilek Hakkani‑Tür; WHAT: ReIn, a test‑time intervention that embeds reasoning into a conversational agent’s decision‑making for error recovery; WHERE: presented on arXiv under Computation and Language (cs.CL) and Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); WHEN: submitted to arXiv on 19 February 2026; WHY: to enable robust recovery from user‑induced dialogue errors without fine‑tuning the model or modifying system prompts, thereby improving task success across diverse error scenarios.

🏷️ Themes

Conversational AI, Error recovery, Large language model robustness, On‑the‑fly adaptation, Reasoning integration

Entity Intersection Graph

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Deep Analysis

Why It Matters

ReIn introduces a test‑time intervention that enables large language model agents to recover from conversational errors without fine‑tuning, improving reliability in real‑world deployments

Context & Background

  • Large language models with tool integration excel on fixed datasets but struggle with unexpected user errors
  • Traditional approaches focus on error prevention, often requiring costly model updates
  • ReIn proposes an external reasoning module that diagnoses errors and guides recovery during inference

What Happens Next

Future work will explore integrating ReIn with broader dialogue systems and evaluating its impact on user satisfaction in live settings. Researchers may also investigate automated generation of error‑diagnosis rules to further reduce manual effort

Frequently Asked Questions

How does ReIn avoid modifying the backbone model?

It injects an external reasoning module at inference time that identifies errors and suggests recovery plans, leaving the original model parameters untouched.

What types of errors can ReIn handle?

It targets ambiguous and unsupported user requests, but the framework can be extended to other unforeseen error types through additional diagnostic rules.

Original Source
--> Computer Science > Computation and Language arXiv:2602.17022 [Submitted on 19 Feb 2026] Title: ReIn: Conversational Error Recovery with Reasoning Inception Authors: Takyoung Kim , Jinseok Nam , Chandrayee Basu , Xing Fan , Chengyuan Ma , Heng Ji , Gokhan Tur , Dilek Hakkani-Tür View a PDF of the paper titled ReIn: Conversational Error Recovery with Reasoning Inception, by Takyoung Kim and 7 other authors View PDF HTML Abstract: Conversational agents powered by large language models with tool integration achieve strong performance on fixed task-oriented dialogue datasets but remain vulnerable to unanticipated, user-induced errors. Rather than focusing on error prevention, this work focuses on error recovery, which necessitates the accurate diagnosis of erroneous dialogue contexts and execution of proper recovery plans. Under realistic constraints precluding model fine-tuning or prompt modification due to significant cost and time requirements, we explore whether agents can recover from contextually flawed interactions and how their behavior can be adapted without altering model parameters and prompts. To this end, we propose Reasoning Inception , a test-time intervention method that plants an initial reasoning into the agent's decision-making process. Specifically, an external inception module identifies predefined errors within the dialogue context and generates recovery plans, which are subsequently integrated into the agent's internal reasoning process to guide corrective actions, without modifying its parameters or system prompts. We evaluate ReIn by systematically simulating conversational failure scenarios that directly hinder successful completion of user goals: user's ambiguous and unsupported requests. Across diverse combinations of agent models and inception modules, ReIn substantially improves task success and generalizes to unseen error types. Moreover, it consistently outperforms explicit prompt-modification approaches, underscoring its utility as an...
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Source

arxiv.org

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