Use reasoning when the task deserves it
Decide when a chain-of-thought style prompt is useful, and when a direct prompt is cleaner.
The move: make the task earn the reasoning budget. Chain-of-thought style prompting is useful when a task can fail because the model skips a step. That includes calculations, multi-constraint decisions, root-cause analysis, policy interpretation, and trade-off recommendations. The reasoning space gives the model a place to stage the work before it commits. It is weaker when the task is already clear. If the answer is a lookup, extraction, format conversion, or simple rewrite, extra reasoning increases latency and can introduce side commentary you do not need. Use a quick triage: Clear task Ask for the output directly and define the…
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