Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Asking an AI to show its reasoning step by step before giving a final answer, which often improves accuracy on complex tasks.
Plain English Explanation
Chain-of-thought prompting asks an AI to show its reasoning step by step before giving a final answer. Breaking a problem into stages often produces more accurate results than asking for an instant reply.
It is one of the simplest prompt-engineering techniques available to everyday users.
Analogy
Chain-of-thought prompting is like requiring a student to show their working on a maths paper rather than writing only the final number. The steps reveal — and often correct — mistakes along the way.
How is it used?
Developers use chain-of-thought prompting to improve maths, logic, and reasoning in LLMs. Asking "explain your steps" before the answer is a simple version anyone can use in ChatGPT.
Real-world Example
A user solving a multi-step word problem gets a better result by prompting: "Think through this step by step, then give the final answer."
Common Misconceptions
Showing steps does not guarantee correctness — models can confabulate convincing but wrong reasoning chains.
See Also
Also known as: CoT prompting, chain of thought