smartai/readme.hints.md

SmartAI Project Hints

Anthropic Extended Thinking Feature

Overview

The Anthropic provider now supports extended thinking by default across all methods. Extended thinking enables Claude to spend more time reasoning about complex problems before generating responses, leading to higher quality answers for difficult questions.

Configuration

Extended thinking is configured at the provider level during instantiation:

import * as smartai from '@push.rocks/smartai';

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: 'your-token-here',
  extendedThinking: 'normal', // Options: 'quick' | 'normal' | 'deep' | 'off'
});

Thinking Modes

The extendedThinking parameter accepts four modes:

Mode	Budget Tokens	Use Case
'quick'	2,048	Lightweight reasoning for simple queries
'normal'	8,000	Default - Balanced reasoning for most tasks
'deep'	16,000	Complex reasoning for difficult problems
'off'	0	Disable extended thinking

Default Behavior: If extendedThinking is not specified, it defaults to 'normal' mode (8,000 tokens).

Supported Methods

Extended thinking is automatically applied to all Anthropic provider methods:

• chat() - Synchronous chat
• chatStream() - Streaming chat
• vision() - Image analysis
• document() - PDF document processing
• research() - Web research with citations

Token Budget Constraints

Important: The thinking budget must be less than max_tokens for the API call. The current max_tokens values are:

• chatStream(): 20,000 tokens (sufficient for all modes ✓)
• chat(): 20,000 tokens (sufficient for all modes ✓)
• vision(): 10,000 tokens (sufficient for all modes ✓)
• document(): 20,000 tokens (sufficient for all modes ✓)
• research(): 20,000 tokens for all searchDepth levels (sufficient ✓)

Performance and Cost Implications

Token Usage:

• You are charged for the full thinking tokens generated, not just the summary
• Higher thinking budgets may result in more thorough reasoning but increased costs
• The budget is a target, not a strict limit - actual usage may vary

Response Quality:

• 'quick': Fast responses, basic reasoning
• 'normal': Good balance between quality and speed (recommended for most use cases)
• 'deep': Highest quality reasoning for complex problems, slower responses

Recommendations:

• Start with 'normal' (default) for general usage
• Use 'deep' for complex analytical tasks, philosophy, mathematics, or research
• Use 'quick' for simple factual queries where deep reasoning isn't needed
• Use 'off' only if you want traditional Claude behavior without extended thinking

Usage Examples

Example 1: Default (Normal Mode)

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: process.env.ANTHROPIC_TOKEN,
  // extendedThinking defaults to 'normal'
});

await provider.start();

const response = await provider.chat({
  systemMessage: 'You are a helpful assistant.',
  userMessage: 'Explain the implications of quantum computing.',
  messageHistory: [],
});

Example 2: Deep Thinking for Complex Analysis

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: process.env.ANTHROPIC_TOKEN,
  extendedThinking: 'deep', // 16,000 token budget
});

await provider.start();

const response = await provider.chat({
  systemMessage: 'You are a philosopher and ethicist.',
  userMessage: 'Analyze the trolley problem from multiple ethical frameworks.',
  messageHistory: [],
});

Example 3: Quick Mode for Simple Queries

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: process.env.ANTHROPIC_TOKEN,
  extendedThinking: 'quick', // 2,048 token budget
});

await provider.start();

const response = await provider.chat({
  systemMessage: 'You are a helpful assistant.',
  userMessage: 'What is the capital of France?',
  messageHistory: [],
});

Example 4: Disable Thinking

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: process.env.ANTHROPIC_TOKEN,
  extendedThinking: 'off', // No extended thinking
});

await provider.start();

const response = await provider.chat({
  systemMessage: 'You are a helpful assistant.',
  userMessage: 'Tell me a joke.',
  messageHistory: [],
});

Example 5: Extended Thinking with Vision

const provider = new smartai.AnthropicProvider({
  anthropicToken: process.env.ANTHROPIC_TOKEN,
  extendedThinking: 'normal',
});

await provider.start();

const imageBuffer = await fs.promises.readFile('./image.jpg');
const analysis = await provider.vision({
  image: imageBuffer,
  prompt: 'Analyze this image in detail and explain what you see.',
});

Testing

Comprehensive tests for extended thinking are available in:

• test/test.thinking.anthropic.ts - Tests all thinking modes

Run tests with:

pnpm test

Run specific thinking tests:

npx tstest test/test.thinking.anthropic.ts --verbose

API Reference

According to Anthropic's documentation:

• Extended thinking is supported on Claude Sonnet 4.5, 4, 3.7, Haiku 4.5, and Opus 4.1, 4
• The current model used is claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
• Minimum thinking budget is 1,024 tokens
• Thinking budget must be less than max_tokens

Implementation Details

The extended thinking feature is implemented via:

1. Interface: IAnthropicProviderOptions.extendedThinking property
2. Helper Method: getThinkingConfig() private method that maps modes to token budgets
3. API Parameter: Adds thinking: { type: 'enabled', budget_tokens: number } to all API calls

The thinking configuration is applied automatically to all API calls when the provider is instantiated.