RetiredSupersededRE-002Retired Dec 2024
Tell the model to think step by step
Chain-of-thought prompting to elicit reasoning — the most repeated prompting tip of 2023.
WHAT CHANGED
WasTell the model to think step by step
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NowSet reasoning effort and leave the steps alone
OpenAI's guidance now calls the instruction unnecessary and notes it can hinder performance. Still valid on non-reasoning models.
SOURCES
START HEREReasoning best practices
RING HISTORY
Aug 2026 — set to Retired