Chain-of-Thought Prompting — ChatGPT
Asking a model to "think step by step" before answering measurably improves accuracy on reasoning, math, and multi-step logic tasks because it forces the model to externalize intermediate steps instead of jumping to a guess..
The prompt
A customer has a $1,200 budget. Product A costs $340 and lasts 2 years. Product B costs $610 and lasts 4 years. Which has the better cost-per-year? Think step by step, show your math, then give a one-line recommendation.
Pro tip: Chain-of-thought helps most on math, logic, debugging, and multi-criteria decisions — skip it for simple factual lookups, it just adds noise.
How to use this prompt
- Copy the prompt using the button above.
- Add any context specific to your situation — the more specific you are, the better the output.
- Paste it into ChatGPT and run it.
- If the answer feels generic, add constraints: audience, length, tone, and what to avoid. That single change fixes most weak output.
Learn the technique
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Module 2 — Core Techniques · Prompt Engineering Fundamentals
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Zero-shot means asking directly with no examples.
GrokZero-Shot vs Few-Shot Prompting — Grok
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ClaudeChain-of-Thought Prompting — Claude
Asking a model to "think step by step" before answering measurably improves accuracy on reasoning, math, and multi-step logic tasks because it forces the model to externalize intermediate steps instead of jumping to a guess..
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When you need output your app or spreadsheet can actually use, explicitly request a schema.
Related across the site
Chain-of-thought prompting
Chain-of-thought prompting asks a model to work through its reasoning step by step before answering. It measurably improves accuracy on maths, logic, and multi-step problems by forcing intermediate steps instead of an immediate guess.
Few-shot prompting
Few-shot prompting means including two to five worked examples of the input-output pattern you want before making your real request. It is the fastest way to lock in a consistent format, tone or edge-case behaviour.
Zero-Shot vs Few-Shot Prompting — ChatGPT
Zero-shot means asking directly with no examples.
10 Prompt Mistakes That Make AI Output Generic
The specific, fixable reasons AI output comes back bland — and what to write instead. Each mistake includes a before-and-after example you can apply immediately.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting: When It Helps and When It Wastes Money
Chain-of-thought prompting improves accuracy on reasoning tasks by asking the model to work step by step. Here is why it works, where it helps most, and when it is pure overhead.
Fine-tuning
Fine-tuning continues training a pre-trained model on your own examples to specialise its behaviour. It is the right tool for teaching consistent style, format or classification behaviour — not for adding knowledge.