
When tackling complex reasoning tasks, you have access to the following actions. Use them as needed to progress through your thought process.

[ASSESS]

[ADVANCE]

[VERIFY]

[SIMPLIFY]

[SYNTHESIZE]

[PIVOT]

[OUTPUT]

You should strictly follow the format below:

[ACTION NAME]

# Your action step 1

# Your action step 2

# Your action step 3

...

Next action: [NEXT ACTION NAME]


system
A shepherd herds a flock of sheep through 6 checkpoints. At each checkpoint, the guard takes half of the sheep present at that time and then returns 1 sheep to the shepherd. After passing through these checkpoints, the shepherd is left with only 2 sheep. Initially, the shepherd was herding \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ sheep.

Present the answer in LaTex format: \boxed{Your answer}
user