Chain of thought CoT
Prompt the model to write out its intermediate steps before giving the final answer.
Ask a model to work through a problem first and accuracy rises on tasks with several dependent steps. Each step is written with the earlier ones in view, instead of everything being squeezed into one leap.
It costs tokens and time, and it does nothing for retrieval, formatting or single-step tasks. On a reasoning-model it is redundant because that behaviour is already trained in.
The written steps also fail as an account of how the answer was really produced. Read them as scratch paper that helps the result. They are no audit trail.
Tagged
Where this comes up
Prompts, configs and tutorials in the library that touch this term.
- GuideUniversal
Turn a messy task into a prompt in five minutes
Most weak prompts come from a task nobody fully described. A five-step routine to fix that before you type, with a worked example.
- GuideUniversal
Summaries you can trust
A summary is a claim about a document, so it can be wrong in the same ways as any claim. Four habits keep it honest.
- GuideUniversal
Briefing a coding assistant: the first message
A coding assistant works from what you tell it and what it can see. Here is what to put in the first message so you spend less time correcting it.
- GuideUniversal
How to check what an AI tells you
A few checks that catch most wrong answers: which claims to verify, how to ask for sources, and why a confident tone tells you nothing.
- CheatsheetChatGPT
ChatGPT commands and keyboard shortcuts
The commands and shortcuts the interface never shows you, in one table. Mostly keyboard, mostly undocumented.
Tested on GPT-5 · May 2026
- GuideUniversal
How to write a prompt that actually works
A short checklist to run any prompt through before you send it: who, what, shape and what to leave out. Those four things separate a specific prompt…