[Feature] Add auto-detection for reasoning_config when only reasoning_parser is set (#38214)

Signed-off-by: chaunceyjiang <chaunceyjiang@gmail.com>

docs/features/reasoning_outputs.md

@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ Token counting starts from `reasoning_start_str`. Once the reasoning token count
 To use this feature:
 
 - `--reasoning-parser` enables reasoning extraction.
-- `--reasoning-config` defines the reasoning boundary tokens (e.g., `reasoning_start_str`, `reasoning_end_str`).
+- `--reasoning-config` defines the reasoning boundary tokens (e.g., `reasoning_start_str`, `reasoning_end_str`). If not set, vLLM will attempt to automatically initialize these tokens from the reasoning parser.
 - `thinking_token_budget` (a sampling parameter) sets the per-request reasoning token limit.
 
 If `thinking_token_budget` is not specified, no explicit reasoning limit is applied beyond normal generation constraints such as `max_tokens`.

tests/v1/entrypoints/openai/test_thinking_token_budget.py → tests/entrypoints/openai/chat_completion/test_thinking_token_budget.py

@@ -24,6 +24,24 @@ def server():
         "--max-model-len",
         "2048",
         "--enforce-eager",
+        "--gpu-memory-utilization",
+        "0.4",
+        "--no-async-scheduling",
+    ]
+    with RemoteOpenAIServer(MODEL_NAME, args) as remote_server:
+        yield remote_server
+
+
+@pytest.fixture(scope="module")
+def server_with_auto_reasoning_config():
+    args = [
+        "--reasoning-parser",
+        "qwen3",
+        "--max-model-len",
+        "2048",
+        "--enforce-eager",
+        "--gpu-memory-utilization",
+        "0.4",
         "--no-async-scheduling",
     ]
     with RemoteOpenAIServer(MODEL_NAME, args) as remote_server:
@@ -31,12 +49,18 @@ def server():
 
 
 @pytest_asyncio.fixture
-async def client(server):
-    async with server.get_async_client() as async_client:
+async def client(request, server, server_with_auto_reasoning_config):
+    server_map = {
+        "default": server,
+        "auto_config": server_with_auto_reasoning_config,
+    }
+    target_server = server_map[request.param]
+    async with target_server.get_async_client() as async_client:
         yield async_client
 
 
 @pytest.mark.asyncio
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("client", ["default", "auto_config"], indirect=True)
 async def test_thinking_token_budget_mixed_requests(client: openai.AsyncOpenAI):
     """Test that mixed requests (some with thinking_token_budget, some without)
     complete successfully without errors."""
@@ -61,6 +85,7 @@ async def test_thinking_token_budget_mixed_requests(client: openai.AsyncOpenAI):
 
 
 @pytest.mark.asyncio
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("client", ["default", "auto_config"], indirect=True)
 async def test_thinking_token_budget_limits_reasoning(client: openai.AsyncOpenAI):
     """Test that thinking_token_budget limits the number of reasoning tokens.
 
@@ -82,6 +107,6 @@ async def test_thinking_token_budget_limits_reasoning(client: openai.AsyncOpenAI
             reasoning_token_count += 1
 
     assert reasoning_token_count == THINK_BUDGET, (
-        f"reasoning tokens ({reasoning_token_count}) != "
+        f"reasoning tokens ({reasoning_token_count}) exceeded "
         f"thinking_token_budget ({THINK_BUDGET})"
     )

tests/v1/logits_processors/test_correctness.py

@@ -106,6 +106,7 @@ class MockReasoningConfig:
 
     reasoning_start_token_ids = [THINK_START_TOKEN_ID]
     reasoning_end_token_ids = [THINK_END_TOKEN_ID]
+    enabled = True
 
 
 def _generate_fake_sampling_metadata(

vllm/config/reasoning.py

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ from dataclasses import field
 
 from vllm.config.model import ModelConfig
 from vllm.config.utils import config
+from vllm.reasoning import ReasoningParserManager
 from vllm.tokenizers import cached_tokenizer_from_config
 
 
@@ -18,11 +19,11 @@ class ReasoningConfig:
     `initialize_token_ids` and are not intended to be set directly.
     """
 
-    # NOTE: These parameters are temporary, the intent is to derive them
-    # automatically from the reasoning parser in a future version.
-    reasoning_start_str: str = "<think>"
+    reasoning_parser: str = ""
+    """The name of the ReasoningParser to use for this model."""
+    reasoning_start_str: str = ""
     """String that indicates the start of reasoning."""
-    reasoning_end_str: str = "</think>"
+    reasoning_end_str: str = ""
     """String that indicates the end of reasoning content."""
 
     _reasoning_start_token_ids: list[int] | None = field(
@@ -36,6 +37,16 @@ class ReasoningConfig:
     """Private backing field for `reasoning_end_token_ids`. Set by
     `initialize_token_ids`. Not intended to be configured directly."""
 
+    _enabled: bool = field(default=False, init=False, repr=False)
+    """Private field indicating whether reasoning token IDs have been initialized.
+    Set to True by `initialize_token_ids` once token IDs are initialized."""
+
+    @property
+    def enabled(self) -> bool:
+        """Returns True if reasoning is enabled (i.e. if token IDs have been
+        initialized), False otherwise."""
+        return self._enabled
+
     @property
     def reasoning_start_token_ids(self) -> list[int] | None:
         """Token IDs derived from `reasoning_start_str`. Set automatically by
@@ -54,15 +65,36 @@ class ReasoningConfig:
             self._reasoning_start_token_ids is not None
             and self._reasoning_end_token_ids is not None
         ):
-            return
+            self._enabled = True
+            return  # Already initialized
 
         tokenizer = cached_tokenizer_from_config(model_config=model_config)
+        reasoning_start_str = self.reasoning_start_str
+        reasoning_end_str = self.reasoning_end_str
+        if self.reasoning_parser is not None and (
+            not reasoning_start_str or not reasoning_end_str
+        ):
+            parser_cls = ReasoningParserManager.get_reasoning_parser(
+                self.reasoning_parser
+            )
+            reasoning_parser = parser_cls(tokenizer)
+            start_token = reasoning_parser.reasoning_start_str
+            if start_token and not reasoning_start_str:
+                reasoning_start_str = start_token
 
+            end_token = reasoning_parser.reasoning_end_str
+            if end_token and not reasoning_end_str:
+                reasoning_end_str = end_token
+
+        if not reasoning_start_str or not reasoning_end_str:
+            # If we don't have valid strings to tokenize,
+            # we can't initialize the token IDs.
+            return
         self._reasoning_start_token_ids = tokenizer.encode(
-            self.reasoning_start_str, add_special_tokens=False
+            reasoning_start_str, add_special_tokens=False
         )
         self._reasoning_end_token_ids = tokenizer.encode(
-            self.reasoning_end_str, add_special_tokens=False
+            reasoning_end_str, add_special_tokens=False
         )
 
         if not self._reasoning_start_token_ids or not self._reasoning_end_token_ids:
@@ -72,3 +104,4 @@ class ReasoningConfig:
                 f"reasoning_end_str='{self.reasoning_end_str}'. "
                 "Ensure the strings are valid tokens in the model's vocabulary."
             )
+        self._enabled = True

vllm/config/vllm.py

@@ -1210,6 +1210,12 @@ class VllmConfig:
 
         if self.reasoning_config is not None and self.model_config is not None:
             self.reasoning_config.initialize_token_ids(self.model_config)
+            if not self.reasoning_config.enabled:
+                logger.warning_once(
+                    "Auto-initialization of reasoning token IDs failed. "
+                    "Please check whether your reasoning parser has implemented "
+                    "the `reasoning_start_str` and `reasoning_end_str`."
+                )
 
         # Hybrid KV cache manager (HMA) runtime rules:
         # - Explicit enable (--no-disable-kv-cache-manager): error if runtime

vllm/engine/arg_utils.py

@@ -1591,7 +1591,7 @@ class EngineArgs:
         self._set_default_max_num_seqs_and_batched_tokens_args(
             usage_context, model_config
         )
-
+        self._set_default_reasoning_config_args()
         sliding_window: int | None = None
         if not is_interleaved(model_config.hf_text_config):
             # Only set CacheConfig.sliding_window if the model is all sliding
@@ -2233,6 +2233,13 @@ class EngineArgs:
             )
             self.enable_prefix_caching = False
 
+    def _set_default_reasoning_config_args(self):
+        if not self.reasoning_parser:
+            return
+        if self.reasoning_config is None:
+            self.reasoning_config = ReasoningConfig()
+        self.reasoning_config.reasoning_parser = self.reasoning_parser
+
     def _set_default_max_num_seqs_and_batched_tokens_args(
         self,
         usage_context: UsageContext | None,

vllm/reasoning/abs_reasoning_parsers.py

@@ -39,6 +39,20 @@ class ReasoningParser:
         # whereas all tokenizers have .get_vocab()
         return self.model_tokenizer.get_vocab()
 
+    @property
+    def reasoning_start_str(self) -> str | None:
+        """Set `reasoning_start_str` to the strings that delimit
+        the reasoning block (e.g. `""<seed:think>""` and `"<think>"`).
+        """
+        return None
+
+    @property
+    def reasoning_end_str(self) -> str | None:
+        """Set `reasoning_end_str` to the strings that delimit
+        the reasoning block (e.g. `""</seed:think>""` and `"</think>"`).
+        """
+        return None
+
     @abstractmethod
     def is_reasoning_end(self, input_ids: Sequence[int]) -> bool:
         """

vllm/reasoning/basic_parsers.py

@@ -39,6 +39,14 @@ class BaseThinkingReasoningParser(ReasoningParser):
         """The token that ends reasoning content."""
         raise NotImplementedError
 
+    @property
+    def reasoning_start_str(self) -> str:
+        return self.start_token
+
+    @property
+    def reasoning_end_str(self) -> str:
+        return self.end_token
+
     def __init__(self, tokenizer: TokenizerLike, *args, **kwargs):
         super().__init__(tokenizer, *args, **kwargs)
 

vllm/v1/engine/input_processor.py

@@ -98,9 +98,9 @@ class InputProcessor:
                 self.tokenizer,
             )
 
-            if (
-                params.thinking_token_budget is not None
-                and self.vllm_config.reasoning_config is None
+            if params.thinking_token_budget is not None and (
+                self.vllm_config.reasoning_config is None
+                or not self.vllm_config.reasoning_config.enabled
             ):
                 raise ValueError(
                     "thinking_token_budget is set but reasoning_config is "

vllm/v1/sample/logits_processor/builtin.py

@@ -301,7 +301,7 @@ class ThinkingTokenBudgetLogitsProcessor(LogitsProcessor):
         max_num_reqs = vllm_config.scheduler_config.max_num_seqs
 
         # Check if thinking is enabled
-        self.is_enabled = reasoning_config is not None
+        self.is_enabled = reasoning_config is not None and reasoning_config.enabled
 
         self.reasoning_start_token_ids = getattr(
             reasoning_config, "reasoning_start_token_ids", []