In [23, 24], Y.-P. Lee introduced a notion of universal relation for formal Gromov–Witten potentials. Universal relations are connected to tautological relations in the cohomology ring of the moduli space Mg,n of stable curves. Y.-P. Lee conjectured that the two sets of relations coincide and proved the inclusion (tautological relations) ⊂ (universal relations) modulo certain results announced by C. Teleman. He also proposed an algorithm that, conjecturally, computes all universal/tautological relations. Here we give a geometric interpretation of Y.-P. Lee’s algorithm. This leads to a much simpler proof of the fact that every tautological relation gives rise to a universal relation. We also show that Y.-P. Lee’s algorithm computes the tautological relations correctly if and only if the Gorenstein conjecture on the tautological cohomology ring of Mg,n is true. These results are first steps in the task of establishing an equivalence between formal and geometric Gromov–Witten theories. In particular, it implies that in any semi-simple Gromov–Witten theory where arbitrary correlators can be expressed in genus 0 correlators using only tautological relations, the formal and the geometric Gromov–Witten potentials coincide.