agentsop-code-execution-decision

Decision rubric for when an LM agent should write-and-run code (Program-of-Thought / code interpreter) versus reason in natural language: classify each step as deterministic- computable (emit + execute code, feed the result back) vs judgment (stay in prose). Use when designing or debugging an agent step that does arithmetic/parsing/data transforms, when prose reasoning hallucinates a computation (under-coding), or when a sandbox round- trip is wasted on a judgment task (over-coding). Search keywords: code interpreter, agent does math wrong, calculator hallucination, when to run code vs reason, program of thought, PoT, tool vs reasoning.