Chain of Thought
Prompting a model to write intermediate reasoning steps before concluding.
In plain language
Chain of thought helps with math, logic and multi-step planning. However, the written reasoning may not reflect the model's internal computation and should not be treated as a reliable explanation. For simple tasks, forcing long reasoning adds cost and errors.
Example
List knowns, then the formula, then substitute and calculate.
Recommended tools
Related terms
Large Language Model
A model trained on massive text to understand and generate natural language.
Model Evaluation
Designing test sets and scoring rules to decide whether a model works for a specific task.
Prompt Engineering
Designing instructions, examples and constraints so a model reliably produces the desired output.
Agent Memory
A mechanism for an agent to store and retrieve user preferences, past tasks and key facts across sessions.