Reasoning Trace

Chain-of-thought reasoning improves accuracy on multi-step problems, and it produces an artefact — the intermediate steps — that is usually discarded. Retaining it changes what can be reviewed after the fact: not only whether an answer was correct but whether the route to it was sound. This matters where an answer is defensible only if its reasoning is, such as eligibility determinations, clinical triage or contract interpretation. It also creates an obligation, because a retained trace may contain sensitive intermediate content that the final answer omitted, and it inherits the same retention and access requirements as any other record.

Centralpoint stores prompts, reasoning traces and final answers as a single governed record with the same classification, audience scoping and retention treatment as any other content. The trace is not a debug artefact living outside the governance perimeter; it is inside it.