Reasoning best practices
by OpenAI
When to pick a reasoning model and how prompting them differs from chat models.
OpenAI explains situations where reasoning models are useful and how to give them suitable tasks. It is a helpful comparison point before reusing a prompt designed for a different model family.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Models
- openai-reasoning-models
- Category
- Prompting
- Tags
- reasoning
- Source date
- date not stated
- Added
- 2026-10-18
- Last verified
- 2026-10-18
- Status
- ok
- Prerequisites
- Assumes basic LLM familiarity or the ability to read examples and configure a workflow.
- Subcategory
- reasoning and structured output
- Region
- West
- Original language
- en
- Access
- free
- Resource reuse
- closed: No general open-reuse grant established from the inspected page. Closed is the conservative index bucket, not a legal finding; the resource is publicly readable. Facet definitions
Summary in our own words. Rights remain with the original creator. Credit and correction policy.