Asked about Making a call

Does max_tokens make the model give shorter answers?

An answer that works

No. It is a hard cut-off, not an instruction. The model writes as though unconstrained and gets chopped mid-word. To get a shorter answer, ask for one in the prompt.

Reading an answer is not being able to give one. The section that teaches this is Making a call, 2 hours of The Messages API.

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