Chat models commonly include a chat template that formats messages and can add instructions before they reach the model.

We tested Qwen3.8-27B through @Baseten, which uses Qwen3.8-27B's own chat template. It tells low to keep its thinking brief and focused, and xhigh to think carefully, check assumptions, and consider alternatives. Medium adds neither instruction, although thinking remains enabled.

That difference may help explain medium's lower scores: these settings change how the model is instructed to approach a problem, rather than simply giving it a larger thinking budget.

View Qwen3.8-27B's chat template: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B/blob/main/chat_template.jinja#L51