A small Codex prompt tweak for fixing bugs
In a bug-fixing workflow, giving Codex detailed information such as visible symptoms, re conditions, and s usually fixed the problem, but sometimes failed badly. Adding the phrase “do thought experiments” appeared to make the fixes much more reliable, even described as a 100% success rate in that experience.
The likely reason is that Codex may spend more effort imagining the when the bug happens, instead of only reading the code as text. The useful idea is to ask Codex to mentally walk through the program while .
Key points
- Detailed can still fail when Codex does not reason through the runtime behavior.
- Adding “do thought experiments” may push Codex to inspect the bug more carefully.
- The goal is to make Codex imagine the at the moment the bug appears.
- This is a useful prompt experiment, but not a proven guarantee.