Chain of Thought

Cut the Fluff: Leaner AI Thinking When it comes to large language models (LLMs), brains aren’t the only thing growing—so are their waistlines. As AI systems become increasingly powerful in their ability to reason, a hidden cost emerges: token bloat, high latency, and ballooning energy consumption. One of the most well-known methods for boosting LLM intelligence is Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. CoT enables models to break down complex problems into a step-by-step sequence—much like how humans tackle math problems by writing out intermediate steps. This structured thinking approach, famously adopted by models like OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek-R1 (source), has proven to dramatically increase both performance and transparency. ...

Introduction In the race to develop increasingly powerful AI agents, it is tempting to believe that size and scale alone will determine success. OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini are all remarkable examples of cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) capable of handling complex, end-to-end tasks. But behind the marvel lies a critical commercial reality: these models are not free. For enterprise applications, the cost of inference can become a serious bottleneck. As firms aim to deploy AI across workflows, queries, and business logic, every API call adds up. This is where a more deliberate, resourceful approach can offer not just a competitive edge—but a sustainable business model. ...