Chaining

What this technique does

Prompt chaining means not asking for a big job all at once but splitting it across several prompts — outline, then draft, then polish. Ask for the lot in one go and the opening gets all the care while the sentences get shorter towards the end; split it up and each step becomes the whole of that step, so the density holds to the finish.

Being able to correct course partway matters just as much. Fix the order at the outline stage and you do not have to rewrite ten pages of body text.

Good example / bad example

Bad

make onboarding material for new hires. write the contents and all the content

Good

1) Please write only the table of contents for new-hire onboarding material. Give the chapter titles and one line each on what the chapter covers, and do not write the body yet.

2) Take chapter 2 from that outline and write the body for it. Bear in mind that new hires read this in their first week.

3) Join up the chapters written so far, and tidy up only the overlapping explanations and the places where the voice differs.

The bad example gives a plausible contents page but a body that runs to two or three lines per chapter. The good one settles the outline first and writes chapter by chapter, so each chapter comes out at a length you can actually use, and you can redo only the chapters you do not like.

How to write it

• Please write only the table of contents (or the outline) first. Do not write the body yet.
• Take item 1 from the list above and write the body for that one.
• Join up what we have so far, and tidy only the overlaps and the places where the voice differs.

Watch out

As the steps go on it forgets conditions set earlier. At each step, restate the core conditions — reader, length — in one line.

Split something as short as a single email and you add turns for the same result. Use it where asking in one go leaves the back half thin.

Unfamiliar terms? See Aha AI: context-window