Reasoning and effort

Models that think before answering, with a setting for how much thinking to spend.

Reasoning models produce internal steps before the final answer, which helps on multi-step problems. Those steps cost output tokens and time. An effort or budget setting trades quality for speed and cost per call.

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Related terms

Tokens: The pieces of text models read and write, and the unit you pay for.
Model routing and fallback: Sending each request to the model that fits it, and to another one when the first fails.

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