- In short
- Extended thinking is a per-request capability that adds a separate reasoning pass before the final answer, controlled via an effort setting rather than a raw token budget on current model generations. Thinking tokens are billed as output tokens and add latency; when extended thinking is not engaged, none of those tokens are generated or billed. The decision to enable it should be justified by a measured accuracy gap after prompt improvements, not applied by default because it "can't hurt."
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