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Explainable Innovation Engine: Dual-Tree Agent-RAG with Methods-as-Nodes and Verifiable Write-Back

arXiv cs.AI / 3/11/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper introduces an Explainable Innovation Engine that enhances retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) by upgrading knowledge units from text chunks to methods-as-nodes, enabling structured, multi-step synthesis.
  • The system maintains a weighted method provenance tree for traceability and a hierarchical clustering abstraction tree for efficient navigation during inference.
  • A strategy agent explicitly selects synthesis operators like induction, deduction, and analogy to compose new method nodes while recording an auditable synthesis trajectory.
  • A verifier-scorer layer prunes low-quality candidates and writes validated method nodes back into the system to support continual learning and growth.
  • Expert evaluations across six domains demonstrate consistent performance improvements, especially in derivation-heavy tasks, highlighting the roles of provenance backtracking and pruning in enhancing explainability and control.

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence

arXiv:2603.09192 (cs)
[Submitted on 10 Mar 2026]

Title:Explainable Innovation Engine: Dual-Tree Agent-RAG with Methods-as-Nodes and Verifiable Write-Back

Authors:Renwei Meng
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Abstract:Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves factual grounding, yet most systems rely on flat chunk retrieval and provide limited control over multi-step synthesis. We propose an Explainable Innovation Engine that upgrades the knowledge unit from text chunks to methods-as-nodes. The engine maintains a weighted method provenance tree for traceable derivations and a hierarchical clustering abstraction tree for efficient top-down navigation. At inference time, a strategy agent selects explicit synthesis operators (e.g., induction, deduction, analogy), composes new method nodes, and records an auditable trajectory. A verifier-scorer layer then prunes low-quality candidates and writes validated nodes back to support continual growth. Expert evaluation across six domains and multiple backbones shows consistent gains over a vanilla baseline, with the largest improvements on derivation-heavy settings, and ablations confirm the complementary roles of provenance backtracking and pruning. These results suggest a practical path toward controllable, explainable, and verifiable innovation in agentic RAG systems. Code is available at the project GitHub repository this https URL.
Comments:
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.09192 [cs.AI]
  (or arXiv:2603.09192v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.09192
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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history

From: Renwei Meng [view email]
[v1] Tue, 10 Mar 2026 05:04:28 UTC (11,692 KB)
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