The Schema Tax Is a Schema Design Tax: When Constrained JSON Decoding Costs Accuracy, and When It Helps

Separates schema enforcement, schema visibility and field order in constrained JSON decoding. Across Qwen3-1.7B/4B/8B on GSM8K, AG News and CoNLL-2003, enforcing a shown, reasoning-first schema costs little, while answer-first field order and hidden schemas cause the losses. Code and the 12,600 model responses: 10.5281/zenodo.23755108 and github.com/alleyxd/SchemaTax.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-10-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23754532
Primary Topic
Topic Modeling
Type
preprint
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preprint

The Schema Tax Is a Schema Design Tax: When Constrained JSON Decoding Costs Accuracy, and When It Helps

Ali Ashter
1 links
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Topic Modeling
preprint

The Schema Tax Is a Schema Design Tax: When Constrained JSON Decoding Costs Accuracy, and When It Helps

Ali Ashter
preprint en

Abstract

Separates schema enforcement, schema visibility and field order in constrained JSON decoding. Across Qwen3-1.7B/4B/8B on GSM8K, AG News and CoNLL-2003, enforcing a shown, reasoning-first schema costs little, while answer-first field order and hidden schemas cause the losses. Code and the 12,600 model responses: 10.5281/zenodo.23755108 and github.com/alleyxd/SchemaTax.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Topic Modeling
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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The Schema Tax Is a Schema Design Tax: When Constrained JSON Decoding Costs Accuracy, and When It Helps — Ali Ashter · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS