When Chaining Makes Sense

Chaining makes sense when:

• The task is genuinely complex and benefits from staged processing. Extracting claims first, then analyzing them, is easier (more reliable) than doing both in one prompt.
• You need a critique or verification step. Draft something, then have a second AI step review it.
• The input is messy and needs cleaning before analysis. First step: clean and structure. Second step: analyze.
• You're doing very different cognitive tasks in sequence. One step does language task A, another does reasoning task B. Separating them often improves quality.

Chaining is overkill when:

• One well-written prompt handles the task reliably. The cost and latency of two steps aren't worth it.
• You're chaining just to feel sophisticated. "Let me add another AI step" is not a reason by itself.
• The task is simple (classify, summarize, extract). Usually one step is enough.

Ask yourself: would this workflow be significantly better or more reliable with two steps? Or am I adding complexity without benefit?