SYSE.50:11 - SoTA-Echoing

The available abstract-level account of Gilbert, 2024 motivates considering opportunity cost when external support can be useful despite available human ability. That bounded source use supplies neither a universal cost scale nor a validated human/model estimator. The worked human rule remains explicitly uncalibrated until its own comparison earns a stronger claim.

For the technical signal-to-rule construction, KnowNo, CoRL 2023, §§2–3 and 6 is a historical constructive anchor: action scores and separately labeled calibration cases produce an action set that controls help. Its guarantee depends on sampling conditions, accurate help, grounded observations and executable actions; dependent steps need its sequence treatment. Adopt the score-to-decision construction only with those conditions.

SMART, ACL 2025, §§4.1–4.3 offers a learned alternative using mixed subproblems, need annotations and actual tool returns. Its teacher and source heuristics require qualification for the receiving model. The Confidence Dichotomy, ACL 2026, §§3–4 separates answer accuracy from verbalized confidence; improving the latter does not itself demonstrate a routing policy.

These mechanisms support alternative bounded constructions. They establish no universally best signal or threshold. Reopen the selected construction when access, model, source assumptions or the cost of mistaken help changes.