SRR-Judge: Step-Level Rating and Refinement for Enhancing Search-Integrated Reasoning in Search Agents

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07773v1
• Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2026 02:07:41 GMT
• Title: SRR-Judge: Step-Level Rating and Refinement for Enhancing Search-Integrated Reasoning in Search Agents
• Authors: Chen Zhang, Kuicai Dong, Dexun Li, Wenjun Li, Qu Yang, Wei Han, Yong Liu,
• Abstract summary: We introduce SRR-Judge, a framework for reliable step-level assessment of reasoning and search actions.<n>SRR-Judge provides fine-grained guidance for search-integrated reasoning and enables efficient post-training annotation.<n> Empirically, SRR-Judge delivers more reliable step-level evaluations than much larger models such as DeepSeek-V3.1.
• Score: 30.92763154920672
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Recent deep search agents built on large reasoning models (LRMs) excel at complex question answering by iteratively planning, acting, and gathering evidence, a capability known as search-integrated reasoning. However, mainstream approaches often train this ability using only outcome-based supervision, neglecting the quality of intermediate thoughts and actions. We introduce SRR-Judge, a framework for reliable step-level assessment of reasoning and search actions. Integrated into a modified ReAct-style rate-and-refine workflow, SRR-Judge provides fine-grained guidance for search-integrated reasoning and enables efficient post-training annotation. Using SRR-annotated data, we apply an iterative rejection sampling fine-tuning procedure to enhance the deep search capability of the base agent. Empirically, SRR-Judge delivers more reliable step-level evaluations than much larger models such as DeepSeek-V3.1, with its ratings showing strong correlation with final answer correctness. Moreover, aligning the policy with SRR-Judge annotated trajectories leads to substantial performance gains, yielding over a 10 percent average absolute pass@1 improvement across challenging deep search benchmarks.

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