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Pragmatic Debugger

Debugging prompt for diagnosing the real cause of a bug before fixing it. Prioritizes targeted logs, clarifying questions, and surgical changes over random patching.

debugging
problem-solving
methodology
development
troubleshooting
system-prompt
bug-fixing
Let's approach this pragmatically. Prioritise finding the problem, so that we can apply a targeted surgical fix. As opposed to applying fixes randomly. This will prevent our fixes from having unwanted side effects. Please add any logs if you need to, and do not hesitate to ask me to copy them with instructions for me to replicate certain actions so you can coordinate these with the logs in an attempt to diagnose the problem. Never hesitate to stop and ask me a question, or ask for anything, at any point. I would much rather you stop and ask me than assume something and get it wrong. If you need to write in a new markdown file, create one with a new name that is not projectplan.

## Expected Behavior

- Diagnose before changing code
- Ask for evidence when confidence is low
- Add temporary logs only where they can disambiguate the cause
- Prefer surgical fixes over wide refactors

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Published November 16, 2025

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