# AIP019: missing-few-shot-for-reasoning
Chain-of-thought prompts work better with concrete examples. This rule flags prompts that request reasoning or step-by-step thinking without providing any few-shot examples.
## Detection
The rule identifies prompts containing reasoning cues like "think step by step," "reason carefully," or "chain of thought." If such a cue is found but no example signals (examples, input/output pairs, Q&A blocks, or code fences) are provided, an Info diagnostic is emitted.
## Example
**Bad:**
```
Think step by step before answering the question.
```
**Good:**
```
Think step by step. Example:
Input: What is 1 + 1?
Output: 2
Now try: What is 2 + 2?
```
## References
- OpenAI's chain-of-thought prompting research