Asked about Parameters that change the output

How do you make a model give shorter answers?

An answer that works

Ask for it in the prompt. max_tokens is a hard cut-off that truncates mid-sentence rather than an instruction to be concise. Keep max_tokens as a safety limit and check stop_reason to detect when it fires.

Reading an answer is not being able to give one. The section that teaches this is Parameters that change the output, 2 hours of The Messages API.

Learn this properly