Stop Asking AI to Debug Your Code (Here's What Works Instead)

So you've got a bug. Stack trace looks like alphabet soup. Your instinct: paste it into Claude/ChatGPT and wait for genius. Doesn't work. AI can't debug your code for you. It's terrible at understanding your actual problem. Here's the real move. The Problem With "Fix My Bug" When you dump 50 lines of context and ask "why is this broken?", the AI guesses. It can't run your code. Can't step through with actual values. So it generates plausible-sounding nonsense, you copy-paste it, and 20 minutes later you're down a rabbit hole.