What is Prompt chaining?

Prompt chaining is breaking a big task into a sequence of smaller prompts, where each step's output becomes the input to the next.

Instead of asking a model to do everything in one sprawling prompt, you split the work into stages — research, then outline, then draft, then edit — and pass each result forward. Each step is simple enough to get right and easy to inspect, so a problem shows up where it happens rather than getting buried in one tangled answer.

Chaining pays off when a task has genuinely distinct phases or when one mega-prompt keeps dropping requirements. It costs more calls and a little orchestration, but you gain control and reliability: you can fix or rerun a single step without redoing the whole thing. It's the practical, multi-step cousin of chain-of-thought reasoning.