ReZero: Enhancing LLM search ability by trying one-more-time

Alan Dao, Thinh Le

ReZero: Enhancing LLM search ability by trying one-more-time: 16 upvotes on Hugging Face Daily Papers, #12 of 30 papers on 2025-04-16. Day-by-day upvote history.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) improves Large Language Model (LLM) performance on knowledge-intensive tasks but depends heavily on initial search query quality. Current methods, often using Reinforcement Learning (RL), typically focus on query formulation or reasoning over results, without explicitly encouraging persistence after a failed search. We introduce ReZero (Retry-Zero), a novel RL framework that directly rewards the act of retrying a search query following an initial unsuccessful attempt. This incentivizes the LLM to explore alternative queries rather than prematurely halting. ReZero demonstrates significant improvement, achieving 46.88% accuracy compared to a 25% baseline. By rewarding persistence, ReZero enhances LLM robustness in complex information-seeking scenarios where initial queries may prove insufficient.

Paper page on Hugging Face · arXiv

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