Faster Replies: Turn Off Model Reasoning
Add a one-line marker to your workflow's system message to skip a reasoning model's chain-of-thought — lower latency and fewer tokens for short-answer workflows.
Written By Philippe
Last updated 3 days ago
Why Your Workflow Might Be Slow
Some AI models are reasoning models — before they answer, they run a hidden chain-of-thought. That extra thinking step is great for hard, multi-step problems, but for a short-answer chat workflow it mostly adds latency and token cost without improving the reply.
If your workflow uses a reasoning-capable model (for example minimax/minimax-m3 on the OpenRouter Chat Model node) and replies feel slow, you can switch the thinking step off.
The Marker
Add this marker anywhere in the system message for your AI Agent node:
<<indie:no-reasoning>>That's it. When the platform sees the marker it:
- Removes the marker from the message before the model reads it — the model never sees the text.
- Disables the model's reasoning step for that workflow's requests.
The result is a faster, cheaper reply for the same prompt.
What It Does and Doesn't Affect
- Only reasoning-capable models are affected. On a model that has no reasoning step, the marker does nothing.
- It's opt-in. No marker means no change — your workflow behaves exactly as a standard n8n workflow would. Nothing is altered unless you add the marker yourself.
- It changes speed, not facts. The model still answers the same question with the same instructions; it just skips the internal deliberation.
When to Use It
Learn More
Reasoning is a feature of the underlying model provider. For background on what reasoning tokens are and how providers expose them, see OpenRouter's documentation: Reasoning Tokens.
Not sure which model your workflow uses? Check the OpenRouter Chat Model node in your workflow — it shows the selected model and defaults to openai/gpt-4.1-mini, which has no reasoning step.
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