[modeless]

Yes, that quote is contained in my comment. But I don't think it unambiguously excludes tool use in the internal chain of thought.

I don't think tool use would detract from the achievement, necessarily. I'm just interested to know.

[KoolKat23]

End to end in natural language would imply no tool use, I'd imagine. Unless it called another tool which converted it but that would be a real stretch (smoke and mirrors).