TaoBench: Do Automated Theorem Prover LLMs Generalize Beyond MathLib?
Authors: Alexander K Taylor, Junyi Zhang, Ethan Ji, Vigyan Sahai, Haikang Deng, Yuanzhou Chen, Yifan Yuan, Di Wu, Jia-Chen Gu, Kai-Wei Chang, Nanyun Peng, Amit Sahai, Wei Wang
Organizations: University of California, Los Angeles · University of California, Santa Barbara
Automated theorem proving (ATP) benchmarks largely consist of problems formalized in MathLib, so current ATP training and evaluation are heavily biased toward MathLib's definitional framework. However, frontier mathematics is often exploratory and prototype-heavy, relying on bespoke constructions that deviate from standard libraries. In this work, we evaluate the robustness of current ATP systems when applied to a novel definitional framework, specifically examining the performance gap between standard library problems and bespoke mathematical constructions. We introduce TaoBench, an undergraduate-level benchmark derived from Terence Tao's Analysis I, which formalizes analysis by constructing core mathematical concepts from scratch, without relying on standard Mathlib definitions, as well as by mixing from-scratch and MathLib constructions. For fair evaluation, we build an agentic pipeline that automatically extracts a compilable, self-contained local environment for each problem. To isolate the effect of definitional frameworks, we additionally translate every problem into a mathematically equivalent Mathlib formulation, yielding paired TaoBench-Mathlib statements for direct comparison. While state-of-the-art ATP models perform capably within the MathLib framework, performance drops by an average of roughly 26% on the definitionally equivalent Tao formulation. This indicates that the main bottleneck is limited generalization across definitional frameworks rather than task difficulty. TaoBench thus highlights a gap between benchmark performance and applicability, and provides a concrete foundation for developing and testing provers better aligned with research mathematics.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Tao’s Analysis I constructs several mathematical structures in LEAN from scratch, often using formulations that diverge significantly from their equivalents in MathLib. TaoBench provides mathematically equivalent MathLib counterparts, and reveals a substantial degradation in model performance when navigating Tao’s specific definitional framework.
Figure 2: Agentic framework for automatically extracting a compilable, self-contained local environment from a formalized textbook. The construction of references and dependencies for each exercise is performed using the JiXia tool. An agentic harness, equipped with a file-lookup tool and a Lean verifier, then iteratively builds a compilable, self-contained local environment.
Figure 3: Translation pipeline for converting exercises from Tao’s definitional framework to MathLib’s. The rewriting and equivalence checking stages ensure the compilability and mathematical equivalence of TaoBenchMathLib , followed by expert verification for additional assurance.
Model
TaoBench
TaoBenchMathLib
Pass@128
(%)
Pass@128
(%)
DeepSeek-Prover-V2-7B (w/o COT)
57/150
38.00
82/150
54.67
DeepSeek-Prover-V2-7B
62/150
41.33
104/150
69.33
Goedel-Prover-V2-8B
56/150
37.33
106/150
70.67
Kimina-Prover-8B
33/150
22.00
75/150
50.00
Goedel-Prover-V2-32B
74/150
49.33
109/150
72.67
Table 1: Model Performance on TaoBench and TaoBenchMathLib . Results are reported as pass rates on 150 problems. For the evaluation results of tree-search-based models, please see Appendix A.4.1 for details.
Figure 4: Model Performance vs. Definitions in Context. Performance on TaoBench and TaoBenchMathLib as a function of the number of in-context definitions. The performance delta is defined as performance ( TaoBench ) - performance ( TaoBenchMathLib ). DS, GD, and KM indicate DeepSeek-Prover-V2, Goedel-Prover-V2, and Kimina-Prover, respectively.
Model
TaoBench
Pass@128
(%)
DeepSeek-7B w/o COT
57/150
38.00
- w/o Context
41/150
27.33
DeepSeek-Prover-V2-7B
62/150
41.33
- w/o Context
44/150
29.33
Goedel-Prover-V2-8B
56/150
37.33
Table 2: Model performance on TaoBench with and without the retrieved context as part of the input.
Model
TaoBench
TaoBenchMathLib
Pass@8
(%)
Pass@8
(%)
GPT-5.1 ( OpenAI, 2025 )
78/150
52.00
97/150
64.67
Gemini 3 Pro ( Google, 2025 )
69/150
46.00
91/150
60.67
DeepSeek-V3.2 ( DeepSeek-AI, 2025 )
71/150
47.33
105/150
70.00
Table 3: Model Performance on TaoBench and TaoBenchMathLib for frontier foundation models.
Figure 5: Case studies: Nat.backwards_induction and Convergesto.squeeze. The textbook context for TaoBench is omitted due to space limitations. The full statements of the two exercises are shown in Figures 10 and 11 .
# Local Definitions
0
[1, 5)
[5, 10)
10 +
Data Count
35
40
41
34
Table 4: Counts of data samples across ranges of different numbers of local definitions.
Appendix figures & tables9 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Label
Description
A
Fully Equivalent. The two versions express the same mathematical statement. They are logically equivalent under standard mathematical interpretations.
B
Nearly Equivalent. The exercise’s intent and proof strategy remain essentially the same. However, due to definitional differences between Tao’s textbook and Mathlib, the Mathlib formulation is slightly different from the corresponding Tao statement.
C
Minor Differences. The exercise’s intent and proof strategy are not preserved across the two versions, but the discrepancy is minor and requires only small adjustments.
D
Major Differences. The exercise’s intent and proof strategy are not preserved across the two versions, and there is a substantial mismatch in meaning.
Appendix
Table 5: Definitions of four judgment labels.
Figure 6: Data Distribution by Chapter.
Model
TaoBench
TaoBenchMathLib
Tactic Budget
Pass Rate
Tactic Budget
Pass Rate
128 × 2 × 600
(%)
128 × 2 × 600
(%)
BFS-Prover-V2-7B ( Xin et al., 2025 )
–
–
103/150
68.67
BFS-Prover-V2-32B ( Xin et al., 2025 )
–
–
105/150
70.00
Appendix
Table 6: Tree-Search Based Model Performance on TaoBench and TaoBenchMathLib . Results are reported as pass rates on 150 problems. Models without reported results for a given setting are marked as "–".
Figure 7: Model Performance by Chapter. For each cell, accuracies on TaoBench and TaoBenchMathLib are shown in the upper-right and lower-left corners, respectively. The upper-left corner shows the difference ( TaoBenchMathLib - TaoBench ). DS[7B]* indicates DeepSeek-Prover-V2-7B (w/o COT).
Chapter
Title
# Data
DS [7B] *
DS [7B]
GD [8B]
GD [32B]
KM [8B]
GPT-5.1
Average
TaoBench
2
The Natural Numbers
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0%
3
Set Theory
64
16
19
15
25
8
41
32%
4
Integers and Rationals
6
5
6
6
6
4
6
92%
5
The Real Numbers
25
17
17
16
19
13
13
63%
6
Limits of Sequences
12
3
3
3
4
3
3
26%
Appendix
Table 7: Model Performance by Chapter
Figure 8: Number of Error Iterations per Data Point
Formal theorem proving enables machine-verifiable evaluation of mathematical reasoning, yet existing benchmarks often emphasize aggregate proof accuracy, concentrate on a narrow range of mathematics, and provide limited evidence of robustness to equivalent reformulations. We introduce MathAdv, a diagnostic benchmark spanning 13 domains across undergraduate- and graduate-level mathematics. Alongside Lean 4 theorem proving, MathAdv provides up to three auxiliary tasks: multiple-choice questions that probe mathematical knowledge, fill-in-the-blank problems that isolate informal reasoning, and expert-crafted transformations that test robustness to problem presentation. Our evaluation of contemporary theorem provers yields four findings: formalization remains a major bottleneck; performance varies substantially across mathematical domains; natural-language guidance helps general-purpose LLMs but can hinder proof-specialized models; and mathematically equivalent reformulations expose substantial robustness limitations. Together, these results show how component-wise evaluation can reveal model capabilities and failure modes that aggregate theorem-proving accuracy obscures. The dataset and evaluation scripts are available at https://github.com/margotyjx/MathAdv.git.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have made notable progress in automated theorem proving, yet existing formal benchmarks remain limited in both mathematical coverage and difficulty. Most are concentrated in areas that are easier to formalize, such as algebra and elementary number theory, and provide limited coverage of subfields that require deeper reasoning, including mathematical analysis. To address this gap, we introduce MA-ProofBench, to the best of our knowledge, the first formal theorem-proving benchmark dedicated to Mathematical Analysis. The benchmark contains 200 formalized theorems covering 6 core topics and 27 subcategories, including measure and integration theory, complex analysis, and functional analysis. The problems are divided into two difficulty levels, an undergraduate level (Level I, 100 problems) and a Ph.D. qualifying level (Level II, 100 problems), to evaluate how well LLMs perform formal reasoning at different mathematical depths. Each problem is constructed through a human-led, LLM-assisted formalization pipeline followed by independent expert review, ensuring that the formal statements remain faithful to the original mathematics. We evaluate a range of recent general-purpose reasoning models and formal theorem provers on MA-ProofBench. However, most models perform poorly: even the best-performing model, GPT-5.5, achieves only 16% Pass@8 on Level I and 5% on Level II, while most models stay close to 0% on Level II. Further analysis identifies Mathlib hallucinations and incomplete proofs as the two dominant failure modes, while an evaluation on the natural-language version of the benchmark exposes a clear gap between informal and formal reasoning. MA-ProofBench is intended to serve as a reliable reference for tracking progress in formal mathematical reasoning in advanced domains.
Formal theorem-proving benchmarks enable mechanically verifiable evaluation of mathematical reasoning in large language models. However, existing benchmarks mainly focus on Olympiad-style problems and algebraic domains, leaving computational and applied mathematics underrepresented. We introduce CAM-Bench, a Lean 4 theorem-proving benchmark of 1,000 Lean proof targets in computational and applied mathematics, with coverage spanning optimization, numerical linear algebra, and numerical analysis. These problems are adapted from textbook exercises and often depend on locally introduced definitions, notation, algorithms, and elementary results. To construct CAM-Bench, we develop a dependency-recovery pipeline that reconstructs the local textbook context needed to state each problem faithfully. It then normalizes each problem into a standalone informal theorem and translates it into a Lean target. We validate the resulting formal problems through Lean compilation and semantic review, checking both formal correctness and semantic alignment with the original exercises. For each problem, we release the raw exercise, recovered context, normalized informal theorem, and final Lean target. CAM-Bench complements existing formal mathematics benchmarks by targeting applied mathematics problems that rely on textbook concepts and elementary theorems, many of which are not directly available as standard Mathlib4 lemmas. We evaluate widely used large language models and formalization agents on CAM-Bench, and analyze common failure modes in tracking local assumptions, applying elementary results, decomposing proofs, and maintaining long-horizon control in Lean.
Wentao Long, Yunfei Zhang, Chenyi Li +3
Fudan University · Qingdao University · Peking University +1