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Advanced Reasoning Techniques

Master advanced reasoning techniques for AI agents including chain-of-thought, tree of thoughts, and self-consistency

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Tree of Thoughts (ToT)

Tree of Thoughts extends Chain of Thought by exploring multiple reasoning paths simultaneously. The model generates candidate thoughts, evaluates them, and selects the most promising branches to explore further. It can backtrack from dead ends. ToT dramatically improves performance on strategic tasks: Game of 24 (4% → 74% success rate).

Interactive: Tree of Thoughts Explorer

Watch how ToT explores multiple solution paths:

Click "Explore Solution Tree" to see Tree of Thoughts in action

ToT vs CoT

Chain of Thought
  • • Single linear path
  • • No backtracking
  • • Fast (2-3x tokens)
  • • Good for simple tasks
Tree of Thoughts
  • • Multiple parallel paths
  • • Can backtrack
  • • Slow (10-20x tokens)
  • • Best for strategic tasks
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When to Use ToT

Strategic planning, game playing (chess, 24), creative writing with multiple storylines, complex code generation. Not worth it for: simple Q&A, classification, translation. Cost: 10-20x more tokens than CoT. Use only when exploring alternatives provides significant value.

← Chain of Thought