Prompt Engineering
Intermediate
Debugging and Error Analysis
Turn logs, stack traces, and reproduction steps into focused root-cause analysis.
30 min
3 sections
debugging
logs
root-cause
1
2
3
01. Provide evidence, not just symptoms
Section 1 of 3
Good debugging prompts include the error, environment, recent changes, expected behavior, actual behavior, reproduction steps, and relevant code. Ask for ranked hypotheses and a minimal next test.
text
You are diagnosing a production-only Next.js error.
Expected:
Users can submit checkout.
Actual:
POST /api/checkout returns 500 in production only.
Evidence:
<log>
TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'priceId')
</log>
Recent change:
Moved product catalog from static JSON to CMS fetch.
Output:
Return top 3 hypotheses, evidence for each, and the fastest verification step.Back to Course