Phase 4: When Things Break · 20 min · Any vibe coding tool

Escaping Infinite Correction Loops

When each fix breaks something else, you're not debugging — you're playing whack-a-mole. Stop and escape.

Hiring signal: What changes when you use this: you can recognize when you're stuck in a correction loop and escape it — which means you don't waste hours on a broken build.

What you will learn

Recognize the whack-a-mole trap in debugging
Apply the 3-round rule to debugging corrections
Use the fresh-context technique to escape loops
Know when to split the problem into smaller pieces

Your Mission

Debug until hitting the whack-a-mole trap, then escape using the fresh-context technique. Output: escape_log.md.

You need: Any AI coding tool with a project you can break.

Time: 30 minutes.

Step 1: Learn to Recognize the Trap (3 min)

You're in the whack-a-mole trap if:

Each fix solves the immediate error but creates a new one
You've done 3+ correction rounds and the build isn't converging
Errors are cycling (old errors come back after being fixed)
You're fixing symptoms, not root causes

The 3-round rule:

Round 1: Paste error → AI fixes → new error. OK, normal.
Round 2: Paste new error → AI fixes → another new error. Getting concerning.
Round 3: Paste third error → AI fixes → yet another error. STOP.

After 3 rounds without converging, continuing is counterproductive. The AI's context is overloaded.

The context pollution principle
Every message, every correction, every error you paste fills the AI's context window. After 3 rounds, the AI is holding: your original spec, the first build, first error, first fix, second error, second fix, third error, third fix, and your current message. Fresh context eliminates all that baggage — the AI sees only the current code and the current problem.

Unlock the full lesson

You've read the first 2 sections. The rest of this lesson covers Step 2: Build Something and Create a Complex Bug (5 min), Step 3: Debug Until You Hit the Trap (10 min), Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Trap Recognized, Step 4: Escape with Fresh Context (10 min), Fresh Context Escape, Comparison, You're Done — plus a hands-on lab, quiz, and project artifact.

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