Lemur: Integrating Large Language Models in Automated Program Verification

Haoze Wu, Clark Barrett, Nina Narodytska

Keywords: Large Language Model; Program Verification; Automated Reasoning

Abstract: The demonstrated code-understanding capability of LLMs raises the question of whether they can be used for automated program verification, a task that typically demands high-level abstract reasoning about program properties that is challenging for verification tools. We propose a general methodology to combine the power of LLMs and automated reasoners for automated program verification. We formally describe this methodology as a set of derivation rules and prove its soundness. We instantiate the calculus as a sound automated verification procedure, which led to practical improvements on a set of synthetic and competition benchmarks.

Submission Number: 28