Inspect variable values — AI Prompts for Visual Studio Code

3 ready prompts

Written for the moment this actually comes up.

Execute — do the immediate task

I need to inspect variable values to explain a miscomputed total to Priya. Pause the running test…

I need to inspect variable values to explain a miscomputed total to Priya. Pause the running test at the failing assertion, open the locals and watches for the current frame, and capture the values of cart.items, item.price, item.quantity, and runningTotal. Copy those values into a short snippet I can paste into Slack. Ladder L1

Improve — make it easier to accept

Before I present values to Priya, make them easy to read: show expanded object properties, collapse…

Before I present values to Priya, make them easy to read: show expanded object properties, collapse irrelevant system fields, convert timestamps to ISO, and display numbers with two decimals. Flag any values that are NaN, null, or zero where nonzero is expected. If any collection is long, surface the first five items and summarize the rest. Ladder L2

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

The test paused and runningTotal is NaN, but I’m not sure whether a single price became NaN or an…

The runningTotal is NaN in the paused frame

The test paused and runningTotal is NaN, but I’m not sure whether a single price became NaN or an arithmetic operation did it. I cannot see earlier mutations in this frame. Should I backtrack to where runningTotal is initialized, add a watch on every place it’s written, or instrument the addition operation? What approach will most quickly reveal the root cause? Ladder L5

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