From Explanations to Interventions: Execution-Guided Counterfactual Synthesis in Temporal Graphs

Abstract

Can a trace explaining model execution also compute the changes needed for a specified alternative prediction? We propose trace-guided intervention search, which uses executable reasoning traces as an intermediate representation for intervention synthesis. A Specified-Foil Counterfactual edits past events so that a frozen temporal predictor selects a designated foil. Our method constructs facts and replacement values from completed original and foil executions and recovered unmet conditions. Proposal generation constructs edits and selects candidates within a fixed cap; exact replay verifies foil top-1 outcomes among retained edits and compositions. Implemented in LiFTER for continuous-time dynamic graphs (CTDGs) and TLogic for temporal knowledge graphs (TKGs), the method improves success over coordinate-based proposal generation by 13.7-34.7 percentage points on four CTDG datasets and 60.0-83.3 points on two TKG datasets under matched downstream search and a proposal cap of 32. Separate shared-candidate comparisons retain 85.7-93.6% of black-box greedy's CTDG success rate with 75.0-80.0% fewer predictor evaluations. A Pulse case study confirms simulator-level survival for five of six interventions. Executable traces thus provide both explanatory evidence and a reusable computational representation for constructing and testing specified alternatives.