---
title: "Tree of thought"
description: "Chain-of-thought commits to one path; tree-of-thought explores several, evaluates partial progress, and backtracks from dead ends — classic search wrapped"
canonical_url: "https://fanout.sh/ai-engineering/lessons/tree-of-thought"
md_url: "https://fanout.sh/ai-engineering/lessons/tree-of-thought.md"
access: "public"
---

# Tree of thought

Chain-of-thought commits to one path; tree-of-thought explores several, evaluates partial progress, and backtracks from dead ends — classic search wrapped

## Public overview

Chain-of-thought commits to one path; tree-of-thought explores several, evaluates partial progress, and backtracks from dead ends — classic search wrapped around a language model. Expensive, but the conceptual bridge to inference-time scaling: spend more compute thinking, get better answers.

---
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