What is Tree of thoughts?
Also called: ToT
Tree-of-thoughts prompting has the model explore several candidate approaches, evaluate them, and expand the best — for planning problems where the first path isn't the right one.
Chain-of-thought follows one line of reasoning. Tree-of-thoughts branches: generate three ways to approach the problem, score each against criteria, develop the strongest, and revisit if it stalls. It suits planning, design and strategy questions with real trade-offs.
You can run it manually in a chat: "give me three fundamentally different approaches, rate them on cost, risk and speed, then develop the best one".
How to use it well
- Define the scoring criteria before asking for branches.
- Cap the branching — three options, one level deep, is enough for most decisions.
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Related terms
Use it right now
Pick a prompt from the library or a pack for your trade, fill in your details, and copy it into the AI you already use.