Diagnose Four Failing Claude Prompts Down to Root Cause
Take four prompts that genuinely underperform, and for each one work from symptom to hypothesis to a named root cause, then fix it and paste the retest that proves the fix held. One of the four must turn out to need something other than a prompt edit. Closes with an efficiency optimization measured in rounds and elapsed time. No coding required.
2 hrs
Est. time
5
Outcomes
8
Rubric criteria
65%
Pass score
What you'll learn
Skills you'll have real reps in after shipping this.
See how it works
When the prompt is not the problem
Instructions buried in a long conversation lose their grip on the output, which looks exactly like a wording problem and does not respond to rewriting. Testing the same prompt in a fresh conversation separates the two in one step.
The scenario
When a prompt underperforms, the reflex is to rewrite it and try again. Sometimes that works, and when it does nobody learns why, so the same failure returns next week wearing different clothes. The prompts that resist rewriting are the ones where the prompt was never the problem: the conversation had accumulated so much material that the relevant instruction stopped carrying weight, the task needed knowledge that was never provided, the work belonged on a different surface, or the request was asking for something no amount of phrasing would produce.
Diagnosis means naming the failure before reaching for a fix. The output was too generic, or it invented specifics, or it ignored a constraint you stated, or it answered a different question than the one you asked, or it was right but unusable in the format it arrived in. Each of those points at a different cause and a different repair. This task makes you run four real diagnoses to root cause, verify each fix with a retest you paste, and include one case where the answer turned out to be a different surface, a different model tier, a fresh conversation, or knowledge the prompt never had.
Your role
You are the person colleagues bring their broken prompts to. Your deliverable is four diagnoses that go from symptom to root cause to a verified fix, plus one optimization that made a working process measurably cheaper to run.
Start the task to unlock the full brief
You'll get the step-by-step requirements, setup commands, the 8-criterion grading rubric, tips, and the ability to submit your solution for instant AI grading.
Free to start · submit when you're ready
Learning resources
What you'll build in this prompt troubleshooting task
This is a build-and-submit task rather than a guided lab, and it requires no coding. You define a short failure taxonomy, then diagnose four prompts that genuinely underperformed, working from the symptom through competing hypotheses to a named root cause. Each diagnosis ends with a fix and a verbatim retest, because a fix without a retest is a claim.
The requirement that makes this more than rewriting is that one of the four has to turn out not to be a wording problem at all. Context that grew too long, a knowledge source that was never provided, a surface that did not fit the job, or a model tier mismatched to the difficulty all produce symptoms that look like prompt failures and do not respond to rewriting. The document closes with an efficiency optimization on a process that already worked, measured in rounds of back-and-forth and elapsed time, and a specific first check to run next time.
Grading is rubric-based and explainable. Your submission is scored against weighted criteria covering the taxonomy, the verbatim evidence, the competing hypotheses, the verified fixes, the non-prompt root cause, and the measured optimization, with per-criterion feedback quoted from your document. The pass threshold is 65 percent and you can resubmit. Troubleshooting and optimization is a scored domain on the Claude Certified Associate Foundations exam.