# Feedback is not proof.

Reading Reflexion and thinking about the gap between a useful memory and a verified result.

ID: reflexion-reading
Author: Dominic Grieco
Published: 2026-09-07T17:56:36.430Z
Updated: 2026-09-07T17:56:36.430Z
Canonical: https://dom.sitesagesolutions.com/research/reflexion-reading

Reflexion is a framework by Noah Shinn, Federico Cassano, Ashwin Gopinath, Karthik Narasimhan, and Shunyu Yao. This note considers the gap between a useful reflection and a verified result.

## Paper
Reflexion: language agents with verbal reinforcement learning

## Paper authors
Noah Shinn, Federico Cassano, Ashwin Gopinath, Karthik Narasimhan, Shunyu Yao

## Paper URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11366

## Read at
2026-09-06T00:00:00Z

## Paper claims
The NeurIPS 2023 paper describes agents that keep written reflections on feedback for later trials, rather than updating model weights. The authors report improvements in their evaluated tasks.

## Interpretation
Store the test result alongside the explanation. A model can produce a plausible explanation without establishing the result.

## Limits
The reported results do not establish that any agent memory system will improve, or that a reflection is a reliable account of what happened.

## Sources
- Reflexion full text, version 4: https://arxiv.org/html/2303.11366v4