# Think Before You Paint: Recursive Latent Reasoning for Diffusion Models

Authors: Paweł Skierś, Małgorzata Grzanka, Wojciech Masarczyk, Jan-Willem van de Meent, Kamil Deja.

PaTh uses a small recursive network to refine learned image-state tokens inside each denoising step and steer a frozen diffusion model through adapters. It learns visual puzzles from reconstruction targets without symbolic solutions or an external verifier.

First public: 2026-10-07.
ArXiv initial submission: 2026-10-07.

[Original paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09876) · [Reading-list entry](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2610.09876/)
[Preprint BibTeX](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2610.09876/citation.bib) · [Preprint CSL-JSON](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2610.09876/citation.csl.json) · [JSON record](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2610.09876/record.json)

## Approaches

- [Continuous-state reasoning](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/topics/continuous-states/): Use vectors—lists of numbers—to carry intermediate reasoning from one step to the next, instead of selecting a text token at every step. Some methods use the model's hidden states; others combine several candidate token representations.
- [Recurrent reasoning](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/topics/recurrent-reasoning/): Repeat parts of the model or keep intermediate information in memory while working through a problem. Some methods also learn how many passes to run.
- [Alternative generation methods](https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/topics/alternative-reasoning-schedules/): Change how intermediate steps are generated, revised, or searched—for example, by refining several steps in parallel. These are related approaches: some still produce written chains of thought.

Summary and categories are editorial. Read the original paper to verify claims and limitations. A citation to a paper does not, by itself, establish that a later method builds on it.

Reading-list version 0.9.5; literature checked through 2026-10-18.