The Economics of Thinking
Test-time compute reframes a question engineers rarely had to ask before: how much is a correct answer worth? Because thinking now costs money and time in direct proportion to how much of it you do, reasoning is no longer free — it's a purchase. A reasoning model can generate many times more tokens working through a problem than a standard model uses to answer it, and you pay for every one. Deciding when that's worth it is the core practical skill of the reasoning era.
Test-time compute reframes a question engineers rarely had to ask: how much is a correct answer worth? Thinking now costs money and time in direct proportion to how much of it you do. A reasoning model can generate many times more tokens than a standard model — and you pay for every one.