# Scratchpad

> A scratchpad is a region of model output reserved for intermediate computation, which the model writes before its final answer so that multi-step calculations can be carried out explicitly.

- Identifier: PTL-0026
- Category: Reasoning Elicitation
- Canonical URL: https://protologue.com/t/scratchpad/
- Also known as: intermediate computation
- Introduced: 2021

## Description

Nye et al. trained models to emit intermediate steps for tasks like long addition and program execution, an important precursor to chain-of-thought prompting. In practice the term also refers to private reasoning sections that are hidden from end users.

## Related terms

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting](https://protologue.com/t/chain-of-thought/)
- [Extended Thinking](https://protologue.com/t/extended-thinking/)

## Sources

- Nye et al. (2021). Show Your Work: Scratchpads for Intermediate Computation with Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.00114

## Cite this entry

Protologue. (2026). Scratchpad. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0026). https://protologue.com/t/scratchpad/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)