Iterative Refinement Chains with Small Language Models: Breaking the Monolithic Prompt Paradigm | Runpod Blog

As prompt complexity increases, large language models (LLMs) hit a “cognitive wall,” suffering up to 40% performance drops due to task interference and overload. By decomposing workflows into iterative refinement chains (e.g., the Self-Refine framework) and deploying each stage on serverless platforms like RunPod, you can maintain high accuracy, scalability, and cost efficiency.