Prompt Chaining Explained

Why chain prompts One large prompt can hide errors and make revisions expensive. A chain separates research, planning, drafting, and review so each intermediate result can be checked.

Design the handoff Give every step an input contract and output schema. Pass only information the next step needs and retain source identifiers when traceability matters.

Add gates Validate structure, required evidence, and business rules between steps. Route failures to a repair step instead of blindly continuing.

Control cost and drift Cache safe intermediate results, cap retries, version each prompt, and test the full chain. Optimizing one step can still reduce end-to-end quality.