GPT-4.1 Thinking Out Loud Prompt for Coding Tasks

Unlike o1 or o3, GPT-4.1 is not a reasoning model and does not generate a built-in internal chain of thought prior to responding. OpenAI's cookbook reports that inducing explicit step-by-step planning in the prompt to make GPT-4.1 "think out loud" before executing tool calls or outputting answers yielded a 4% increase in the SWE-bench Verified pass rate during internal testing.

Before invoking any file-editing tool or providing your final patch, think carefully step-by-step out loud in a planning section: analyze the user's intent, inspect the relevant codebase modules, and outline your verification steps.