Publications
HCSU: A Dataset and Benchmark for Fine-Grained Historical Calligraphy Style Understanding
Yinsheng Yao*, Yan Liu*, Chen Ye.
ECCV 2026
Abstract: Automated fine-grained perception of calligraphy styles--a task vital to cultural heritage
preservation--remains a
critical challenge for Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs), largely constrained by existing
datasets that suffer from
modal mixture and flattened labels. To bridge this gap, we introduce HCSU, the first comprehensive
dataset tailored for
fine-grained Historical Calligraphy Style Understanding. HCSU comprises 39,307 meticulously curated
character images
from 49 historically prominent calligraphers across 10 dynasties, systematically decoupling
authentic ink manuscripts
(Tie) from stone rubbings (Bei) to resolve the long-standing modal mixture problem. Moving beyond
conventional flattened
labels, HCSU provides hierarchical expert-written aesthetic descriptions, enabling two rigorous
evaluation protocols:
fine-grained style discrimination and interpretable aesthetic reasoning. Extensive evaluations
reveal a persistent gap
between calligraphy-related knowledge and visually grounded style perception: state-of-the-art LVLMs
show non-trivial
performance but remain sensitive to script-level, textual, and source-specific cues, and often
struggle to ground
aesthetic judgments in fine-grained brushwork evidence. Ultimately, the HCSU benchmark exposes
fundamental limitations
in current multimodal architectures, aiming to inspire the evolution of expert-level visual
reasoning for cultural
heritage preservation. The dataset is available at this https URL.
FLARE: Fine-Grained Diagnostic Feedback for LLM Code Refinement
Yinsheng Yao*, Hongxiang Zhang*, Weixi Tong, Tianyi Zhang.
Abstract: Large language models often generate code with bugs. Existing methods rely on feedback
signals such as test failures and
self-critiques to iteratively refine the generated code. Such signals are either too coarse-grained
or too high-level,
which is not sufficient to inform the model where to fix the bug. In this work, we present Flare, an
iterative framework
with a lightweight diagnostic model that predicts line-level suspiciousness signals for bug
localization and code
refinement. Given the inherent uncertainty of diagnostic predictions, Flare searches over the top-k
suspicious regions
and selects the best candidate according to execution outcomes. Experiments on LiveCodeBench and
BigCodeBench with five
base LLMs show that, even without candidate search (k=1), Flare outperforms the strongest baseline
with an absolute
improvement from 1.72% to 7.42%. Furthermore, searching over 10 candidates yields an average
improvement of 8.50%
compared with no candidate search. When evaluated in isolation, our lightweight diagnostic model
achieves the best
performance compared with recent fault localization methods, demonstrating that it can provide
reliable fine-grained
guidance for code refinement.
FinReasoning: A Hierarchical Benchmark for Reliable Financial Research Reporting
Yiyun Zhu*, Yidong Jiang*, Ziwen Xu, Yinsheng Yao, Dawei Cheng, Jinru Ding,
Jie Xu.
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in financial research workflows,
where their role is evolving
from single-model assistance for human analysts toward autonomous collaboration among multiple
agents. Yet real-world
deployments still expose factual errors, numerical inconsistencies, and shallow analysis, which can
distort assessments
of corporate fundamentals and trigger severe economic losses. While existing benchmarks have begun
to evaluate such
failures, they score all aspects of the generated analysis in one pass, failing to distinguish
whether a model fails at
foundational stages like auditing and correction, or underperforms at generating research-grade
insights. Consequently,
it obscures capability bottlenecks and the specialized strengths essential for multi-agent role
assignment. To address
these gaps, we introduce FinReasoning, a hierarchical benchmark that decomposes the core
capabilities of financial
research into semantic consistency, data alignment, and deep insight. We further propose a
fine-grained evaluation
framework that strengthens hallucination-correction assessment and incorporates a 12-indicator
rubric for core
analytical skills. FinReasoning reveals clear capability stratification across model types.
Closed-source models (like
Doubao-Seed-1.8) perform strongly overall and are better suited for core reasoning agents in
multi-agent financial
systems; open-source general models (like Qwen3-235B) show clear capability divergence and
consistently underperform on
Semantic Consistency, making them less suited for quality-sensitive generation tasks;
financial-domain models (like
Fin-R1) generate moderate insights but lack foundational auditing skills. Our work has already been
deployed in pilot
tests across several real-world scenarios. The resource is available at this https URL.
MAVEN: Multi-Agent Verification-Elaboration Network with In-Step Epistemic Auditing
Yinsheng Yao, Jiehao Tang, Zhaozhen Yang, Dawei Cheng.
Abstract: While explicit reasoning trajectories enhance model interpretability, existing paradigms
often rely on monolithic chains
that lack intermediate verification, allowing early errors to cascade unchecked. This lack of
modularity impedes
granular auditing and compromises the epistemic trust required for high-stakes applications. We
propose MAVEN
(Multi-Agent Verification-Elaboration Network with In-Step Epistemic Auditing), a
blackboard-inspired framework designed
to transform LLMs into deliberate reasoners through explicit role-decoupling. At its core, MAVEN
operationalizes an
adversarial Skeptic-Researcher-Judge loop, simulating expert deliberation by functionally separating
logical defense
from factual grounding. Experiments on OpenBookQA, TruthfulQA, HALUEVAL and StrategyQA benchmarks
demonstrate that MAVEN
delivers superior reasoning quality across four fine-grained metrics. Notably, MAVEN consistently
outperforms latent
reasoning models such as GEMINI-3.1-Pro and consensus-based baselines (e.g., ReConcile) by
generating explicitly
structured, modular, and verifiable deliberation trajectories, rather than relying on implicit
internal states or
post-hoc consensus. Moreover, comprehensive evaluations confirm that MAVEN is fully model-agnostic,
serving as a strong
and transferable reasoning booster that yields substantial performance improvements across diverse
backbone models.