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Tree of Thoughts

Exploring multiple reasoning paths in a tree, guided by search and self-evaluation.

Definition

Tree of Thoughts extends step-by-step (chain-of-thought) reasoning by exploring several lines of thought at once, arranged like the branches of a tree. At each step the model proposes a few candidate next steps, judges how promising each one looks, and keeps following the best branches while abandoning weak ones. It improves performance on complex planning, puzzle, and multi-step reasoning tasks compared with following a single straight line of reasoning.