Tree of Thought Prompting

Last Updated 10 March, 2026

by David Spuler, Ph.D.

Research on Tree of Thought Prompting

Research papers include:

Shunyu Yao, Dian Yu, Jeffrey Zhao, Izhak Shafran, Thomas L. Griffiths, Yuan Cao, Karthik Narasimhan, 17 May 2023, Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10601
Antonis Iliakis, Jul 5, 2024, Amazing Chat GPT Prompts That Will Take You to The Next Level — Part 3, https://generativeai.pub/i-asked-chat-gpt-to-think-like-a-human-heres-what-i-found-out-7a6017109d66
Alan Boyle, Isha Gupta, Sebastian Hönig, Lukas Mautner, Kenza Amara, Furui Cheng, Mennatallah El-Assady, 31 Aug 2024, iToT: An Interactive System for Customized Tree-of-Thought Generation, https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00413
Pranab Sahoo, Ayush Kumar Singh, Sriparna Saha, Vinija Jain, Samrat Mondal, Aman Chadha, 5 Feb 2024, A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applications, https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07927
Emile J, May 28, 2023, Tree of Thoughts (ToT) Prompting: The Basics, https://medium.com/@emile.jonkers/tree-of-thought-tot-prompting-simply-explained-dca7e719752
Qiqi Chen, Xinpeng Wang, Philipp Mondorf, Michael A. Hedderich, Barbara Plank, 24 Oct 2024 (v2), Understanding When Tree of Thoughts Succeeds: Larger Models Excel in Generation, Not Discrimination, https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17820 http://github.com/mainlp/tot-eval
Cameron R. Wolfe, Dec 23, 2023, Tree of Thoughts Prompting. Solving multi-step problems with LLMs via deliberate planning and exploration, https://towardsdatascience.com/tree-of-thoughts-prompting-65a3e51f9ac4
Cameron R. Wolfe, Aug 21, 2023, Tree of Thoughts Prompting. Solving multi-step problems with LLMs via deliberate planning and exploration, https://cameronrwolfe.substack.com/p/tree-of-thoughts-prompting
Tyler McDonald, Anthony Colosimo, Yifeng Li, Ali Emami, 2 Dec 2024, Can We Afford The Perfect Prompt? Balancing Cost and Accuracy with the Economical Prompting Index, https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01690
Shiv Sakhuja, 25 Sep 2024, Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting Explained: 7 Techniques for Optimizing AI Performance, https://hub.athina.ai/athina-originals/guides-chain-of-thought-cot-prompting-explained-7-techniques-for-optimizing-ai-performance/
Changcheng Li, Xiangyu Wang, Qiuju Chen, Xiren Zhou, Huanhuan Chen, 5 Dec 2024, MTMT: Consolidating Multiple Thinking Modes to Form a Thought Tree for Strengthening LLM, https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.03987
Maciej Besta, Julia Barth, Eric Schreiber, Ales Kubicek, Afonso Catarino, Robert Gerstenberger, Piotr Nyczyk, Patrick Iff, Yueling Li, Sam Houliston, Tomasz Sternal, Marcin Copik, Grzegorz Kwaśniewski, Jürgen Müller, Łukasz Flis, Hannes Eberhard, Hubert Niewiadomski, Torsten Hoefler, 23 Jan 2025 (v3), Reasoning Language Models: A Blueprint, https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11223 (Survey and blueprint for how to build a Large Reasoning Model.)
G Wang, S Zhang, T Zhan, Z Shen, J Li, X Hu, X Sun, Jan 2025, Unlocking the Mysteries of OpenAI o1: A Survey of the Reasoning Abilities of Large Language Models, https://openreview.net/pdf?id=J0ADLa2rNp
Son, M., Won, Y.-J., & Lee, S. (2025). Optimizing Large Language Models: A Deep Dive into Effective Prompt Engineering Techniques. Applied Sciences, 15(3), 1430. https://doi.org/10.3390/app15031430 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/3/1430
Avinash Patil, 5 Feb 2025, Advancing Reasoning in Large Language Models: Promising Methods and Approaches, https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03671
Yifu Ding, Wentao Jiang, Shunyu Liu, Yongcheng Jing, Jinyang Guo, Yingjie Wang, Jing Zhang, Zengmao Wang, Ziwei Liu, Bo Du, Xianglong Liu, Dacheng Tao, 27 Feb 2025 (v2), Dynamic Parallel Tree Search for Efficient LLM Reasoning, https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16235
Komal Kumar, Tajamul Ashraf, Omkar Thawakar, Rao Muhammad Anwer, Hisham Cholakkal, Mubarak Shah, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Phillip H.S. Torr, Salman Khan, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, 28 Feb 2025, LLM Post-Training: A Deep Dive into Reasoning Large Language Models, https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21321 https://github.com/mbzuai-oryx/Awesome-LLM-Post-training
Ruiyan Qi, Congding Wen, Weibo Zhou, Shangsong Liang, Lingbo Li, 15 Aug 2025, LETToT: Label-Free Evaluation of Large Language Models On Tourism Using Expert Tree-of-Thought, https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11280
Abhinav Madahar, 1 Oct 2025, Lateral Tree-of-Thoughts Surpasses ToT by Incorporating Logically-Consistent, Low-Utility Candidates, https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01500
Jiawei Xu, Chia Xin Liang, Ziqian Bi, Xiaoming Li, Danyang Zhang, Zhenyu Yu, Dec 2025, A Comprehensive Survey on Large Language Models: From Pre-training to Autonomous Agents, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ziqian_Bi/publication/399059225_A_Comprehensive_Survey_on_Large_Language_Models_From_Pre-training_to_Autonomous_Agents/links/694c94a07e61d05b5312836f/A-Comprehensive-Survey-on-Large-Language-Models-From-Pre-training-to-Autonomous-Agents.pdf