Reference · Glossary
Chain-of-thought prompting
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Word problems, planning, and tasks where intermediate checks help you audit the path. Prefer structured steps you can verify.
#When to use
Word problems, planning, and tasks where intermediate checks help you audit the path. Prefer structured steps you can verify.
#When not to
Simple lookups, or when exposing reasoning increases leakage risk. Do not trust long explanations as proof of correctness.
#Quality checklist
- Ask for numbered steps and a final answer line
- Verify each critical step against sources or calc
- Compare with a non-CoT baseline on an eval set
#Example
Solve step by step. After the steps, write:
Final answer: <value>
If data is missing, say what is missing instead of guessing.#Learn next
- Lesson: `chain-of-thought-prompting`
- Related: prompt, hallucination