> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.inceptionlabs.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Reasoning Efforts

> Choose how much Mercury reasoning models deliberate before responding, from near-instant answers to deeper multi-step reasoning.

## Reasoning effort levels

`reasoning_effort` controls how much the model deliberates before answering. It applies to `mercury-2.5` and `mercury-2` on the chat completions endpoint and accepts four values:

| Value | Latency | Best for |
| - | - | - |
| `instant` | Lowest | Voice, realtime turns, high-volume automations |
| `low` | Low | Latency-sensitive chat and tool-calling |
| `medium` (default) | Balanced | General-purpose use |
| `high` | Highest | Complex, multi-step reasoning |

If `reasoning_effort` is omitted, the model uses `medium`.


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