👨‍💻 AI LLMs think out loud

Most people don’t realize LLMs think out loud. They generate reasoning token by token, step by step.

If you don’t see its thoughts, it isn’t thinking. It’s just recalling information.

That’s why reasoning models are designed to show their work before giving an answer. Without that stream of thought, there’s no real step-by-step analysis behind the output.

You can’t ask an LLM to hide its reasoning and still expect a smart answer at the end. It doesn’t plan silently and explain its thinking later like a human.

If you skip the thinking steps and ask for a justification afterward, the LLM will make up the “why” on the fly, based on the prompt and what it has already said.

If you want it to think, it has to think out loud.