What is Chain of Thought?
Chain of Thought (CoT) is a technique where the AI model solves a problem step by step, explicitly presenting its reasoning. Instead of giving an immediate final answer, the model breaks the task into stages, verifies intermediate results, and builds a logical chain of conclusions.
Why does CoT improve results?
Language models are auto-regressive — they generate text token by token. When a model "writes out" its reasoning, each next token has more context. New models (o3, Claude with extended thinking) have built-in CoT that drastically improves quality on complex problems.
Applications in AI agents
In multi-agent systems, CoT is crucial: a planning agent must "think through" strategy before delegating tasks. Visible reasoning also enables auditability — you can verify why the agent made a specific decision.