HALT stops RAG search agents once evidence covers every reasoning hop
_reachsumit · x · 2026-08-04
HALT cuts redundant RAG loops by stopping only when evidence covers every hop
The paper studies a classic runtime problem in retrieval-augmented search agents: once enough evidence has already been collected, extra retrieval usually adds latency and noise rather than value.
What HALT does
- Introduces a lightweight verification-aware stopping policy without changing the agent itself.
- Stops only when cumulative evidence supports each required hop/claim.
- Uses either generated hop claims from the question or a diagnostic upper bound with gold supporting facts.
Reported result
- Across three multi-hop QA benchmarks, HALT reduces redundant search while largely preserving exact match.
- Ablations suggest the gains come from claim-evidence alignment, not fixed stop points, lexical overlap, or generic sufficiency.
- In open-corpus pilots, HALT abstains when coverage cannot be reliably verified.
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