Simple explanation
Welcome to Day 13. Something is going to go wrong today. Not by accident. On purpose. Because the best time to practise recovery is before you actually need it. Why AI goes wrong Claude Code is not perfect. It gets things wrong for three reasons: 1. Your prompt was missing information — Claude Code filled the gaps with its own assumptions. Those assumptions were wrong. 2. The task was too big — you asked for too many changes at once and Claude Code lost track of the constraints halfway through. 3. Context got confused — in a long session Claude Code starts to forget earlier decisions and contradicts itself. None of these are disasters. All of them are recoverable in minutes. The 4-step recovery process Step 1 — Stop immediately The moment something looks wrong — stop typing. Do not ask Claude Code to fix it. Do not keep adding prompts hoping something will accidentally work. Every additional prompt makes the situation harder to recover. Step 2 — Identify which step caused the problem Look at your session history. What was the last prompt before things went wrong? That prompt is almost always the cause. Step 3 — Go back to your branch Open GitHub Desktop. Switch back to the branch you created before this session. Your last working version is right there. Nothing is permanently lost. If you did not create a branch — type /clear in Claude Code to start the conversation fresh and ask Claude Code to revert the last change only. Step 4 — Rewrite the prompt with more detail Ask yourself: what did my prompt assume that I never actually said? Add those missing details. Use the 4-part formula. Be more specific about the constraint — what Claude Code should NOT change. Start again with the better prompt.
What to do
The most common reasons prompts go wrong — and the fix: Problem: Claude Code changed files you did not ask it to touch. Fix: Add to your prompt — "Only change [specific file]. Do not modify anything else." Problem: Claude Code ignored your design style. Fix: Update your CLAUDE.md with more specific color codes and font names. Then reference it: "Follow all rules in CLAUDE.md exactly." Problem: Claude Code built the wrong thing entirely. Fix: Your prompt had no context. Start with Part 1 of the 4-part formula — describe what already exists before saying what you want. Problem: A long session started producing inconsistent results. Fix: Type /compact with instructions to keep the most important context. Or start a fresh session — Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md fresh every time. Today's practical task 1. Create a branch called "day-13-recovery-practice." 2. Ask Claude Code to make a change — then immediately ask it to make three more changes at once in the same prompt. 3. Watch what happens. 4. Practise the 4-step recovery process. 5. Switch back to your safe branch. 6. Rewrite the prompts one at a time using the 4-part formula. 7. Compare the results. Today's result: Recovery is no longer a crisis. It is a process. You know it. You have practised it.
Copy-paste prompt
I got this error and the last change looks wrong. Please stop and do not make any further changes. Tell me: which files were modified in the last change, what specifically went wrong, and what the safest way to revert only that last change would be. Then wait for my instruction before doing anything.
Course note
Key takeaway
When something goes wrong: stop immediately, find the last prompt that caused it, go back to your branch, and rewrite the prompt with more detail. That four-step process recovers every broken session. Branch first is what makes step three possible.