thought

Definition

An intermediate reasoning step, as opposed to the final answer. In practice a thought is literally generated text — writing it out is what gives the model somewhere to do multi-step work, since each new token can attend to the ones before it. The cognitive framing is a metaphor: these tokens come from the same mechanism as the answer, not from a separate deliberative process.

Explainers using this term

• Chain-of-Thought from Scratch — What Changes When You Make a Model Show Its WorkChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models
• Test-Time Scaling — How Models Get Better by Thinking LongerChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models
• The Science of Prompt Engineering — What Is Proven and What Is FolkloreChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models