# Effort

Concept · [Building with AI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai)

Also called: reasoning effort, thinking effort, thinking budget, effort level, effort setting

A setting that tells a [reasoning model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/reasoning-model) how much thinking to do before it answers. Higher effort uses more [output tokens](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/output-tokens) and more time, which helps on hard problems and wastes money on easy ones.

**For example:** A team uses low effort for sorting incoming email and high effort for reviewing contract terms.

## Connects to (5)

- [Reasoning model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/reasoning-model): A model, or a mode of a model, that works through a problem in intermediate steps before it answers.
- [Output tokens](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/output-tokens): The tokens the model writes back.
- [Token](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/token): In AI, a small chunk of text, roughly a word or a piece of a word, that an LLM reads and writes.
- [Inference](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/inference): An AI model producing an answer to a request.
- [Model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model): The trained system at the center of an AI product.

Map view: https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/effort