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Sampling tweaks fix Qwen 3.5 overthinking
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REDDIT · REDDIT// 1d agoTUTORIAL

Sampling tweaks fix Qwen 3.5 overthinking

Qwen 3.5's reasoning trace can be improved by enabling built-in tools and setting specific sampling parameters like presence penalty to 1.5. This shifts the model from long, repetitive reasoning to a more natural, Claude-like trace, making it significantly more efficient for daily developer tasks and reducing the "yapping" that often plagues local LLM reasoning chains.

// ANALYSIS

Qwen 3.5's overthinking issue highlights a growing need for "reasoning constraints" in local LLMs to prevent efficient models from becoming slow liabilities.

  • **Tool-Induced Brevity**: Activating tools swaps the model's dense bullet-point reasoning for a more concise "Claude-style" internal monologue.
  • **Presence Penalty is Key**: Increasing `presence_penalty` to 1.5 helps prune the repetitive tokens that lead to infinite loops in long-context reasoning.
  • **Workflow-Dependent**: The fix is particularly effective in Open-WebUI with native function calling enabled, though it applies to any harness that can handle tool definitions.
  • **Community-Driven Refinement**: This reinforces the trend of local LLM power users having to prompt-tune base models to reach their full potential without switching to larger variants.
// TAGS
qwen-3.5llmreasoningprompt-engineeringdevtool

DISCOVERED

1d ago

2026-04-14

PUBLISHED

1d ago

2026-04-13

RELEVANCE

8/ 10

AUTHOR

ayylmaonade