Task Decomposition

Task decomposition is the process of breaking a complex task into smaller, more manageable sub-tasks — a technique that significantly improves AI performance on multi-step problems. When you ask an AI to do something complex in a single prompt, it often produces lower quality output than if you break the task into stages. "Research these five companies, then compare them on these criteria, then recommend the best option" produces better results as three sequential prompts than one.

AI agents use task decomposition automatically; human users can improve their results by decomposing tasks manually before prompting.