{"record_type":"pith_number_record","schema_url":"https://pith.science/schemas/pith-number/v1.json","pith_number":"pith:2026:I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL","short_pith_number":"pith:I3HZOQBF","schema_version":"1.0","canonical_sha256":"46cf9740253cb1221f595cf7b883491ad0cb8f3e7eb9795fb119b7cc776afe83","source":{"kind":"arxiv","id":"2606.13603","version":1},"attestation_state":"computed","paper":{"title":"Beyond the Commitment Boundary: Probing Epiphenomenal Chain-of-Thought in Large Reasoning Models","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.CL"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Daniel Scalena, Elisabetta Fersini, Gabriele Sarti, Luca Bortolussi, Malvina Nissim, Sara Candussio","submitted_at":"2026-06-11T17:21:16Z","abstract_excerpt":"Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning is the dominant paradigm for inference-time scaling in language models, yet the causal influence of individual steps on the final answer poorly understood. We estimate each step's causal importance via early exit and use this measure to study how answers form across the reasoning traces of several model families. Across diverse tasks, we find that reasoning typically crosses a \\emph{commitment boundary} -- a sharp transition from transient intermediate guesses to a stable, high-confidence answer. This transition often happens in a single step, well before the m"},"verification_status":{"content_addressed":true,"pith_receipt":true,"author_attested":false,"weak_author_claims":0,"strong_author_claims":0,"externally_anchored":false,"storage_verified":false,"citation_signatures":0,"replication_records":0,"graph_snapshot":true,"references_resolved":false,"formal_links_present":false},"canonical_record":{"source":{"id":"2606.13603","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"metadata":{"license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","primary_cat":"cs.LG","submitted_at":"2026-06-11T17:21:16Z","cross_cats_sorted":["cs.AI","cs.CL"],"title_canon_sha256":"73a36711d37a85546df99b5371371af9a9af49d0d05aea33b8280045ca942ac8","abstract_canon_sha256":"f5df946bb36d9c3de04cebbf673abe58a02898c4aa7d440b88dfa0791c6fca0a"},"schema_version":"1.0"},"receipt":{"kind":"pith_receipt","key_id":"pith-v1-2026-05","algorithm":"ed25519","signed_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.582176Z","signature_b64":"VmFjcNwQbYfis3U5U6bfZXVtHE4TloCQ7r6Wf+ohxVYXzz1voCbJ1fIsWcKNYzlZrTIjKwHb0RogWhg4rXPaAQ==","signed_message":"canonical_sha256_bytes","builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1","receipt_version":"0.3","canonical_sha256":"46cf9740253cb1221f595cf7b883491ad0cb8f3e7eb9795fb119b7cc776afe83","last_reissued_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581374Z","signature_status":"signed_v1","first_computed_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581374Z","public_key_fingerprint":"8d4b5ee74e4693bcd1df2446408b0d54"},"graph_snapshot":{"paper":{"title":"Beyond the Commitment Boundary: Probing Epiphenomenal Chain-of-Thought in Large Reasoning Models","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.CL"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Daniel Scalena, Elisabetta Fersini, Gabriele Sarti, Luca Bortolussi, Malvina Nissim, Sara Candussio","submitted_at":"2026-06-11T17:21:16Z","abstract_excerpt":"Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning is the dominant paradigm for inference-time scaling in language models, yet the causal influence of individual steps on the final answer poorly understood. We estimate each step's causal importance via early exit and use this measure to study how answers form across the reasoning traces of several model families. Across diverse tasks, we find that reasoning typically crosses a \\emph{commitment boundary} -- a sharp transition from transient intermediate guesses to a stable, high-confidence answer. This transition often happens in a single step, well before the m"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.13603","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.13603/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"},"aliases":[{"alias_kind":"arxiv","alias_value":"2606.13603","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"},{"alias_kind":"arxiv_version","alias_value":"2606.13603v1","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"},{"alias_kind":"doi","alias_value":"10.48550/arxiv.2606.13603","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"},{"alias_kind":"pith_short_12","alias_value":"I3HZOQBFHSYS","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"},{"alias_kind":"pith_short_16","alias_value":"I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2Z","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"},{"alias_kind":"pith_short_8","alias_value":"I3HZOQBF","created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"}],"events":[],"event_summary":{},"paper_claims":[],"inbound_citations":{"count":0,"internal_anchor_count":0,"sample":[]},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"sample":[],"anchors":[]},"links":{"html":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL","json":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL.json","graph_json":"https://pith.science/api/pith-number/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/graph.json","events_json":"https://pith.science/api/pith-number/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/events.json","paper":"https://pith.science/paper/I3HZOQBF"},"agent_actions":{"view_html":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL","download_json":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL.json","view_paper":"https://pith.science/paper/I3HZOQBF","resolve_alias":"https://pith.science/api/pith-number/resolve?arxiv=2606.13603&json=true","fetch_graph":"https://pith.science/api/pith-number/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/graph.json","fetch_events":"https://pith.science/api/pith-number/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/events.json","actions":{"anchor_timestamp":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/action/timestamp_anchor","attest_storage":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/action/storage_attestation","attest_author":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/action/author_attestation","sign_citation":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/action/citation_signature","submit_replication":"https://pith.science/pith/I3HZOQBFHSYSEH2ZLT33RA2JDL/action/replication_record"}},"created_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00","updated_at":"2026-06-12T01:10:12.581500+00:00"}