Ask Before You Optimize: Dynamic Pre-Formulation Clarification for Interactive Optimization
Researchers release OR-Clarify, a benchmark testing whether LLM agents ask clarifying questions before formulating optimization models from incomplete requests.
OR-Clarify evaluates pre-formulation clarification in operations research: each task gives a partial problem description, withholds structured hidden slots, and scores agents via bounded interaction with a simulated user, measuring slot recovery, stopping behavior, silent assumptions, and interaction cost. The authors also propose InterOPT, a two-stage framework that identifies formulation-critical gaps to decide when to ask or stop. In choice-based experiments InterOPT substantially outperforms all baselines in exact slot recovery and remains competitive in the open-ended setting.
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