pocketflow/cookbook/pocketflow-chain-of-thought/design.md

Chain of Thought Node

1. Requirements

Create a self-looping Chain of Thought node that can:

• Generate thoughts to solve a problem step by step
• Revise previous thoughts when necessary
• Branch to explore alternative approaches
• Track thought numbers and adjust total thoughts dynamically
• Generate and verify hypotheses
• Provide a final solution when reasoning is complete

2. Flow Design

This will be a simple flow with a single node that can call itself repeatedly:

flowchart LR
    cot[ChainOfThoughtNode] -->|"continue"| cot

3. Utilities

We'll need one primary utility function:

• call_llm: Call LLM to generate the next thought based on the problem and previous thoughts

4. Node Design

Shared Store Design

shared = {
    "problem": "The problem statement goes here",
    "thoughts": [],  # List of thought objects
    "current_thought_number": 0,
    "total_thoughts_estimate": 5,  # Initial estimate, can change
    "solution": None  # Final solution when complete
}

Each thought in the "thoughts" list will be a dictionary with:

{
    "content": "The actual thought text",
    "thought_number": 1,
    "is_revision": False,
    "revises_thought": None,
    "branch_from_thought": None,
    "branch_id": None,
    "next_thought_needed": True
}

Chain of Thought Node

• type: Regular (self-looping)
• prep: Read the problem and all thoughts so far from shared store
• exec: Call LLM to generate next thought or solution
• post: Update shared store with the new thought and decide whether to continue or finish