Rubber Duck Debugger — Explain Your Bug and Fix It

The rubber duck debugging technique works because explaining your code to something forces you to think about it differently. This prompt is a rubber duck that talks back. Describe: - What your code is supposed to do - What it's actually doing - What you've already tried Get: - A ranked list of likely root causes (with probability estimates) - Specific diagnostic commands to run to confirm the cause - The most likely fix - An explanation of why the bug happened - How to prevent this class of bug in the future - What to add to your debugging mental model Works for: null pointer exceptions, async race conditions, CSS layout bugs, API failures, database query issues, state management bugs, and any code that doesn't behave as expected.