Extended Thinking
Extended thinking gives the model more “reasoning time” before responding. This can improve quality for complex tasks like debugging, architecture decisions, or multi-step refactoring.
Usage
yoyo --thinking high
yoyo --thinking medium
yoyo --thinking low
yoyo --thinking minimal
yoyo --thinking off
Levels
| Level | Aliases | Description |
|---|---|---|
off | none | No extended thinking (default) |
minimal | min | Very brief reasoning |
low | — | Short reasoning |
medium | med | Moderate reasoning |
high | max | Deep reasoning — best for complex tasks |
Levels are case-insensitive: HIGH, High, and high all work.
If you provide an unrecognized level, yoyo defaults to medium with a warning.
When to use it
- Complex debugging — use
highwhen the bug is subtle - Architecture decisions — use
mediumorhighfor design questions - Simple tasks — use
off(the default) for quick file reads, simple edits, etc.
Output
When thinking is enabled, the model’s reasoning is shown dimmed in the output so you can follow along without it cluttering the main response.
Trade-offs
Higher thinking levels use more tokens (and thus cost more) but often produce better results for hard problems. For routine tasks, the overhead isn’t worth it.