Two-Stage Prompt Optimization for Few-Shot Relation Extraction: From Reasoning-Guided Search to Gradient-Guided Refinement
Automatic prompt optimization is still underexplored for episodic few-shot relation extraction with smaller language models. We propose a two-stage framework that combines reasoning-based prompt optimization with gradient-based prompt optimization. The first stage can use any reasoning-based optimizer to make broadprompt improvements in natural language. The second stage applies our GradPO, which uses loss and gradient signals to identify high-impact prompt spans and refine them with local edits. Experiments on FS-TACRED and FS-FewRel show that local refinement usually improves prompts found by the first stage, and GradPO is the most consistent refiner. Our framework achieves state-of-the...
| Authors | Aunabil Chakma, Mihai Surdeanu, Eduardo Blanco |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 28 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 28 June 2026 |
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