AI Glossary
What is Prompt Chaining?
Breaking a big task into a sequence of smaller prompts, checking each result before moving to the next step, instead of asking for everything in one giant prompt.
A request like "analyse this data and write a full report" forces the AI to make many decisions at once, and mistakes early on spoil everything after. A chain splits the job into steps you can check.
A typical chain:
- Understand: "Summarise what this data contains. Do not analyse yet."
- Plan: "Suggest an outline for a one-page report."
- Draft: "Write section 1 only, and show your calculation."
- Polish: "Combine the approved sections and add a 3-line summary."
Why it works: each step is small enough to review, so you catch problems (like a misread number) before they spread.
Run the whole chain in one conversation so the AI remembers earlier steps. Full lesson: Breaking Big Jobs Into a Chain of Small Prompts.