Temperature
A setting that controls how predictable or creative an AI's responses are. Low temperature (near 0) means the AI picks the most likely, most consistent answer — good when you want reliability, like extracting data from a document. High temperature (near 1) means more variety — good for brainstorming or creative writing where you want different ideas each time. Most people don't set this manually; Claude chooses sensible defaults depending on the task.
In practice
You're using Claude to extract dates from contracts — you want the exact date, the same answer every time. You set temperature low (near 0) for maximum consistency. You're using Claude to brainstorm campaign slogans — you want variety. You set temperature higher. Temperature is the dial that controls how predictable vs. creative the outputs are.
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