Model selection isn't just which model — it's which reasoning mode. Turn thinking down or off for straightforward work and reserve deep reasoning for genuinely hard problems.
Don't Burn Reasoning Tokens on Tasks That Don't Reason
🔒 Pro tip · Intermediate
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🎚️Model Selection
60-80% on routed traffic
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Buy More Reasoning on the Cheap Model Before You Upgrade the Tier
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40-70% when most queries are easy
Cascade: Try the Cheap Model First, Escalate Only When It Fails
Send every request to a small model first, programmatically check the answer, and only escalate to a frontier model when the cheap one falls short.