Root-cause first
Understand a bug before touching any code.
The prompt
Here's the error: <paste>. Don't fix anything yet — trace the root cause, list the top 2 hypotheses ranked by likelihood, and tell me which files to look at.Why it works
“Don’t fix yet” blocks the reflex to patch symptoms. Ranked hypotheses force the model to reason about mechanism, and naming files to inspect keeps you in the loop on where the problem actually lives.
Fill in
<paste>— the full error message and stack trace.
Follow-ups
- “Hypothesis 1 looks right — confirm it by checking
@<file>, then propose a fix.”