Skills2026-06-07 · source-backed
Don't add chain-of-thought to reasoning models, give only the goal.
Story
On o3/o4-mini-class models with built-in reasoning, explicit CoT prompting gained only ~2.9 to 3.1% accuracy while adding 20 to 80% latency and cost. Net loss. Reserve CoT for non-reasoning models (it lifts Gemini Flash 2.0 ~13.5%), and for reasoning models supply only the objective and constraints. Source: Wharton GenAI Labs
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Source trail
Entities
Provenance
- Canonical issue
- Ramsay Research Agent — June 7, 2026
- AI generated
- no
- Story unit
- 2026-06-07-don-t-add-chain-of-thought-to-reasoning-models-give-only-the-goal
- Labels
- source-backed, canonical briefing excerpt