What is Tree of Thoughts (ToT) and when does it help?
hardAnswer
- Instead of a linear CoT, the model explores a tree of intermediate steps: at each node, generate K candidate next steps, evaluate them (self-scoring or a value function), and expand the most promising ones (BFS/DFS with pruning).
- Helps on tasks with backtracking / long horizons like Game-of-24, creative writing plotting, planning.
- Cost: 10-100× a single CoT.
- Underlying idea powers modern agent frameworks that combine search + LLM.
Check yourself — multiple choice
- Linear reasoning only
- Tree search over intermediate steps with LLM scoring + BFS/DFS pruning — good for planning / backtracking tasks
- Same as CoT
- Random exploration
ToT: LLM-guided tree search over intermediate reasoning states.
#prompting#chain-of-thought
Practise LLMs & GenAI
214 interview questions in this topic.