Definition
Plain language
A reserved chunk of an AI's internal scratch space where it thinks silently, without turning the thoughts into words.
As stated in the literature
Continuous hidden vectors reserved as a non-tokenized reasoning scratchpad; the action is conditioned on these slots rather than on a decoded rationale, as in MIRAGE and Coconut-style latent reasoning.
Also called: latent slots
Why it matters: It lets a model reason without paying the time cost of writing every step out in words, trading a readable rationale for speed.
For example, before tapping a button, the agent fills a few internal vector slots with its 'thoughts' about what to do next, never converting them into a sentence.
Heard on the show
“So MIRAGE does this: it reserves a small handful of continuous hidden vectors — the paper calls them latent slots — as a kind of silent scratchpad.”Episode 115 — Teaching a Phone Agent to Reason Silently, And Keeping It Honest