The working loop
Communicate while using AI
Keep the interviewer aware of your reasoning.
Understand the problem
Explain the plan before prompting. Summarize the generated change and point out what you rejected. If a tool fails, reason about the failure instead of repeating requests blindly.
Make it concrete
“I will first reproduce the duplicate write, then add a uniqueness constraint and retry-safe behavior.”
Trade-offs and pitfalls
Silent prompting makes it difficult to distinguish your judgment from model output.
Check your understanding
Rehearse a five-minute narrated debugging session.
Practice this topic