Promptles
Multi-Step

Explore Before Editing

Have Claude read and report before it edits, and add the clues only you have.

On unfamiliar code, have Claude read and search first, then report back before it changes anything. Add the clues only you have, like what changed recently, so its plan rests on the code as it is and on facts it can't find. Vague: "Fix the late fees." Specific: "Some library members have been charged late fees twice since we added the holiday closing days in March. Read the fee code and tell me what you find before you change anything."

Where you'll practice this

5 Promptles scenarios teach this principle directly. Each one drops you into a real engineering ticket and asks you to write the prompt you'd send to Claude Code.

  • Look Before You Edit

    After you pull Femi's latest changes, the brew-guides page of the Copper Kettle shop goes blank. The browser console shows: ``` TypeError: formatMinutes is not a function at BrewGuideCard (src/components/BrewGuideCard.jsx:9:15) ``` `formatMinutes` is a small helper that…

  • Untangle the Night-Shift Routing

    At a food delivery app, you look after dispatch: orders in New York and Chicago placed from 11pm to 5am in the restaurant's local time should go to the night-shift crew. Support tickets about the wrong crew have piled up since last month, and an older complaint about the…

  • Zoom Out First

    Tariq, the Platform lead, wants the checkout page faster, and it lives in `billbird/checkout`, a codebase you've never touched. It has seven services, a README last updated two years ago, and the word 'checkout' in 342 files. Nobody has measured where the time goes yet: the…

  • Let Claude Find the Rest

    Ollie Brandt, who runs finance and wholesale, forwarded ticket 4417 from Hoshino Trading, the café customer in Osaka that pays in yen. Their invoice shows `¥1,200.00`, but yen has no minor unit (no cents), so it should read `¥1,200`. `src/lib/formatMoney.ts` is the shared…

  • Read Before You Build

    Your friend Ines set up a starter for your reading-list web page: `index.html`, `books.js`, and `styles.css`. Opening `index.html` in your browser shows three books: The Hobbit, Kindred, and Dune. You've never read JavaScript before. Your first idea is a way to mark a book as…

Other principles in Multi-Step