Multi-Step Planning: Breaking Down Goals

Watch how agents decompose complex goals into sequences of achievable actions

4 lessons

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content

Breaking Big Goals into Steps

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Breaking Big Goals into Steps

Human approach: "Plan a study group" → brain automatically breaks this down:

Who should attend?
When are people free?
Where should we meet?
What materials do we need?
How do we invite everyone?

Agent approach: Same decomposition, but made explicit:

Goal: Plan study group
├─ Subtask 1: Get list of classmates
├─ Subtask 2: Check everyone's availability
├─ Subtask 3: Find location/virtual room
├─ Subtask 4: Compile study materials
└─ Subtask 5: Send invitations

The skill: Breaking complex goals into executable actions.

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quiz

Quiz: 3 Questions

Test your understanding with this quiz.

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Goal: 'Organize a virtual study session.' Which is the correct order of steps?

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feedback

Plan a Complex Task

Complete this exercise and get AI-powered feedback.

Complete the following task.

Plan a Complex Task

Decompose a multi-step goal into executable subtasks. Pay attention to:

Logical ordering (dependencies)
Opportunities for parallelization
Contingency planning (what if something fails?)

Break down this goal into 6-8 ordered steps: 'Help me create and publish a blog post about AI safety.' Mark dependencies.

What's your backup plan if step 4 (writing) fails or produces poor quality?

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