SpecEvo: multi-LLM speculative-evolution framework for cost-efficient scientific discovery
The paper introduces SpecEvo, a multi-LLM framework that coordinates inexpensive 'Speculators' and an 'Advisor' with occasional interventions from a frontier-model 'Navigator' to consolidate search evidence and direct exploration. Across 176 tasks in four scientific and algorithmic discovery domains, SpecEvo matches or outperforms frontier-model baselines while cutting API cost by up to 80%, improving equation-discovery evaluation efficiency by up to 1.5x, and beating the strongest CO-Bench baseline by 3.8%.