MetaCircle proposes a non-LLM “Mechanistic Auto-Research” system
ZimingLiu11 · x · 2026-07-23
The post proposes Mechanistic Auto-Research, a non-LLM approach that aims to beat RSI-style results by scaling insight rather than compute.
The attached diagram frames research progress in three stages:
- Stage 1: learning from internet priors — following what others do.
- Stage 2: learning from experience without understanding — reusing what worked before, but without knowing why.
- Stage 3: learning from experience with understanding — identifying the causal reason something works, so the system can generalize it to new settings.
The core claim is that current auto-research systems are still closer to random trial-and-error, while a mechanistic version would explicitly understand the reason behind success and use that understanding to search more effectively.
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