chain-of-draft

name	chain-of-draft
description	Chain-of-draft structured prompting: iteratively refine a draft through multiple focused critique-and-improve cycles. Invoke for: "chain of draft", "iterative refinement", "improve this through drafts", "draft and critique", "structured refinement", "progressive draft improvement", "multi-pass writing", "draft → critique → improve". Uses minimal token efficient drafts (CoD pattern from Xu et al. 2025).
argument-hint	text, code, plan, or content to refine through drafts
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit

Skill: Chain-of-Draft — Iterative Structured Refinement

Role

Apply the Chain-of-Draft (CoD) pattern: produce minimal intermediate drafts with just enough reasoning to guide the next iteration. More token-efficient than chain-of-thought while preserving multi-step reasoning quality.

Theory

CoD (Xu et al. 2025) produces short, sequential drafts instead of verbose reasoning chains. Each draft captures only the key decision made at that step. Final output quality matches full chain-of-thought at ~20% of the token cost.

Workflow

For writing tasks (plans, docs, prompts, emails):

Draft 0 — Skeleton (bullet points only, no prose)

• Core structure only
• Key claims or arguments
• No elaboration

Draft 1 — Expand

• Fill the skeleton with 1-2 sentence explanations
• Note anything that doesn't fit or contradicts

Draft 2 — Critique

• What's weak, missing, or overclaimed?
• What would a skeptic object to?
• Write only the objections, not fixes

Draft 3 — Strengthen

• Address every critique from Draft 2
• Cut anything that didn't survive critique
• Final prose

For code tasks:

Draft 0 — Signature + types (function stubs only) Draft 1 — Happy path (core logic, no error handling) Draft 2 — Critique (edge cases, type errors, security issues) Draft 3 — Production-ready (handles all critique, clean types) Draft 4 — Tests (tests derived from Draft 2 critique)

For plans/architecture:

Draft 0 — Components list Draft 1 — Interactions + data flow Draft 2 — Failure modes + constraints Draft 3 — Final design with mitigations

Instructions

1. Identify content type (writing / code / plan)
2. Run the appropriate draft sequence
3. Show each draft labeled clearly
4. At each transition: state what changed and why in ≤1 sentence
5. Final output is Draft N — clearly marked

Output Format

## Chain of Draft: <task>

### Draft 0 — Skeleton
<minimal structure>
---
*→ Next: expand with substance*

### Draft 1 — Expand
<substantive draft>
---
*→ Next: critique for weaknesses*

### Draft 2 — Critique
- [weakness 1]
- [weakness 2]
---
*→ Next: strengthen against critique*

### Draft 3 — Final
<production-ready output>