The API won't give you the "thinking" tokens, those are only visible on AI studio. Probably to try to stop distillation, very disappointing. I find reading the cot to be incredibly informative to identify failure modes.
> Hey Everyone,
> Moving forward, our team has made a decision to only show thoughts in Google AI Studio. Meaning, we no longer return thoughts via the Gemini API. Here is the updated doc to reflect that.
Maybe they just updated it? Or people aren't on the same page at Google idk
Previously it said
> Models with thinking capabilities are available in Google AI Studio and through the Gemini API. Note that the thinking process is visible within Google AI Studio but is not provided as part of the API output.
> Hey Everyone,
> Moving forward, our team has made a decision to only show thoughts in Google AI Studio. Meaning, we no longer return thoughts via the Gemini API. Here is the updated doc to reflect that.
https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/thoughts-are-missing-cot-not...
---
After I wrote all of that I see that the API docs page looks different today and now says:
>Note that a summarized version of the thinking process is available through both the API and Google AI Studio.
https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/thinking
Maybe they just updated it? Or people aren't on the same page at Google idk
Previously it said
> Models with thinking capabilities are available in Google AI Studio and through the Gemini API. Note that the thinking process is visible within Google AI Studio but is not provided as part of the API output.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250409174840/https://ai.google...