By giving a model a “think” tool, we can greatly improve its reasoning capabilities by providing a dedicated space for structured thinking. This is a simple, yet effective approach to add reasoning to non-reasoning models.

First published by Anthropic in this blog post, this technique has been practiced by many AI Engineers (including our own team) long before it was published.

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Example

claude_reasoning_tools.py
from textwrap import dedent

from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.anthropic import Claude
from agno.tools.thinking import ThinkingTools
from agno.tools.yfinance import YFinanceTools

thinking_agent = Agent(
    model=Claude(id="claude-3-7-sonnet-20250219"),
    tools=[
        ThinkingTools(),
        YFinanceTools(stock_price=True, analyst_recommendations=True, company_info=True, company_news=True),
    ],
    instructions=dedent("""\
    ## Using the think tool
    Before taking any action or responding to the user after receiving tool results, use the think tool as a scratchpad to:
    - List the specific rules that apply to the current request
    - Check if all required information is collected
    - Verify that the planned action complies with all policies
    - Iterate over tool results for correctness

    ## Rules
    - Its expected that you will use the think tool generously to jot down thoughts and ideas.
    - Use tables where possible\
    """),
    show_tool_calls=True,
)
thinking_agent.print_response(
    "Write a report comparing NVDA to TSLA", stream=True, markdown=True
)

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Developer Resources

You can find more examples in the Reasoning Tools Cookbook.