Breaking Work into Prompt Chains
Split a complex task into small, checkable steps — with validation gates between them — and know when one bigger call is the better choice.
Some features ask a single prompt to do too much. "Read this resolved support thread, decide whether it's worth a help article, strip out the customer's details, check we don't already have an article on it, and write one in our house style." A capable model will produce something every time. But when the result is wrong, you can't tell which of the five jobs failed, you can't test them separately, and you're paying a large model's price for parts a small one could do.
A prompt chain splits that work into a sequence of smaller calls, where your code passes each step's output to the next and checks it in between. In this lesson you'll build one for Deskmate that turns resolved tickets into draft help-center articles, add validation gates that stop bad work early, and learn to recognize when one bigger call is the better design.
Why one big prompt struggles
A single prompt that does several jobs has three structural problems, no matter how well it's written.
The jobs compete for attention. Deciding whether a thread is reusable, removing personal details, and writing clear instructions are different skills. In one prompt, the model balances them all at once, and the one you emphasized least tends to slip. Redaction is a classic casualty: the article reads beautifully and still contains the customer's company name.
Failures are invisible. When the output is a finished article, a bad decision three steps back looks like a bad article. You can't see that the real problem was a thread that never should have become an article in the first place.
Everything runs at the most expensive setting. The hardest step decides the model and effort for the whole call, even if most of the work is simple.
A chain fixes all three by giving each job its own call, its own typed output, and a check before the next step runs. The trade is more calls, more latency, and more code, which is why the second half of this lesson is about when not to chain.