Summary
Prompt chaining: break a task into multiple sequential prompts, each handling a well-defined subtask. Reliability increases at the cost of latency and cost. The engineering pattern behind most production pipelines.
Objectives
- 01Decompose a complex task into a chain.
- 02State the tradeoff between chaining and single-prompt.
- 03Recognize when chaining hides a fundamental problem.
The Lesson
The pattern
Instead of one prompt asking for everything, chain: extract → classify → verify → format. Each stage is simpler, easier to evaluate, easier to swap models on. Each stage adds latency and cost.
The anti-pattern
Long chains that paper over an unclear specification. If you cannot describe the task clearly enough for one prompt, a five-step chain will not save you — it will hide the failure mode.
Key Ideas
- Chaining trades latency for reliability and evaluability.
- Long chains often mask a missing specification.