Decompose a Failing AI Task

Guide the user through splitting a single unreliable AI step into multiple reliable subtasks. The insight: when a single prompt fails on complex inputs, restructuring the task — not just tweaking the prompt — is often the fix.

Step 1: Diagnose why single-step fails

Ask the user:

1. What's the task? (extraction, classification, generation, etc.)
2. When does it work? (simple inputs, short text, single items)
3. When does it fail? (long documents, many items, mixed formats)

Common failure modes

Look at the errors. They usually fall into one of these patterns: