Chain-of-Thought
Working knowledgeTechniques and Architectures
Also called: CoT, Chain of Thought
Chain-of-thought is a model working through intermediate steps before it gives an answer, rather than producing the answer in a single move. Asked what a shipment costs once discount and duty are applied, a model using chain-of-thought sets out each calculation in turn and then states the total. Reasoning models do this natively, without being asked, and often hide the steps from the user.
In practice
Chain-of-thought improves reliability on multi-step work and raises cost with it, because every reasoning step is generated as tokens and billed whether or not the user ever sees it. It also produces a trail somebody can check, which matters wherever an answer has to be defended rather than merely delivered.