PreAct: Prediction Enhances Agent’s Planning Ability

Dayuan Fu, Jianzhao Huang, Siyuan Lu, Guanting Dong, Yejie Wang, Keqing He, Weiran Xu


Abstract
Addressing the disparity between predictions and actual results can enable individuals to expand their thought processes and stimulate self-reflection, thus promoting accurate planning. In this research, we present **PreAct**, an agent framework that integrates **pre**diction, **rea**soning, and **act**ion. By utilizing the information derived from predictions, the large language model (LLM) agent can provide a wider range and more strategically focused reasoning. This leads to more efficient actions that aid the agent in accomplishing intricate tasks. Our experimental results show that PreAct surpasses the ReAct method in completing complex tasks and that PreAct’s performance can be further improved when paired with other memory or selection strategy techniques. We presented the model with varying quantities of historical predictions and discovered that these predictions consistently enhance LLM planning. The variances in single-step reasoning between PreAct and ReAct indicate that PreAct indeed has benefits in terms of diversity and strategic orientation over ReAct.
Anthology ID:
2025.coling-main.1
Volume:
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Owen Rambow, Leo Wanner, Marianna Apidianaki, Hend Al-Khalifa, Barbara Di Eugenio, Steven Schockaert
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1–16
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.1/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Dayuan Fu, Jianzhao Huang, Siyuan Lu, Guanting Dong, Yejie Wang, Keqing He, and Weiran Xu. 2025. PreAct: Prediction Enhances Agent’s Planning Ability. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 1–16, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
PreAct: Prediction Enhances Agent’s Planning Ability (Fu et al., COLING 2025)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.1.pdf