Correct Tests Are Not Enough: Measuring and Training Oracle Conversion in Specification-Based Test Generation

2026-09-05

Abstract

Generating tests from a natural-language specification requires both an input that exposes faulty behavior and a correct expected output. These requirements need not improve together: a model can increase test correctness by choosing easier inputs, or discover useful inputs whose expected outputs it cannot predict. We study this interaction through executable reward decomposition and suite-level oracle-conversion measurement. Our generator jointly emits five input--output tests in one response. During training, audited reference programs provide correctness feedback, while a fixed bank of faulty programs provides two utility signals: potential input kill and effective kill after checking the generated output. An additive GRPO objective preserves both signals without requiring execution at inference time. On an audited TC-Bench split with 506 training and 142 evaluation tasks, three independently trained Qwen3.5-9B runs at step 75 increase full-test correctness from 28.59\% to 42.54\%, input kill from 24.06\% to 25.27\%, and effective full kill from 12.23\% to 14.15\%. Matched 50-step ablations reveal a trade-off: removing kill rewards yields higher correctness and slightly higher full kill, but lowers input kill to 21.60\%. A fixed-input source--oracle crossover on 64 training-pool tasks attributes the principal NoKill-to-FullKill difference to harder input selection rather than worse output prediction on identical inputs. These results identify oracle conversion as a measurable bottleneck and show the benefits and limits of preserving input-utility feedback in joint test generation.

Problem

• test generation
• natural-language specification
• oracle conversion
• input-utility feedback

Innovation

• executable reward decomposition
• oracle conversion measurement
• additive GRPO objective