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Failure Gallery — Diagnose and Fix Broken Prompts

Purpose: Each subdirectory in this gallery contains a deliberately broken .prompt.md file, a description of its symptoms, and a blank diagnosis.md for you to fill in before reading the solution.

This gallery is meant to be used alongside the Prompt Debugging Guide and Module 4 §4.5 (Anti-Patterns). Each case corresponds to one named anti-pattern or failure category.

  1. Open a case's broken-prompt.md and read the prompt.
  2. Without looking at solution.md, write down:
  3. What failure category this belongs to (from the debugging guide)
  4. What specific element(s) are missing or broken
  5. How you would fix it
  6. Save your answer in diagnosis.md (fill in the template).
  7. Open solution.md and compare.

Case Index

Case Anti-Pattern Module Reference
01 — Kitchen Sink Overloaded, multi-goal prompt Module 4 §4.5
02 — Stale Context Hallucination bait; missing grounding Module 5 §5.1
03 — Injection Vulnerable Unguarded system prompt Module 5 §5.2
04 — Ambiguous Format No output schema specified Module 3 §3.6
05 — Missing Constraints Absent role + constraints; vague task Module 1 §1.3 + Module 2 §2.1

Scoring Rubric

When reviewing your diagnosis against the solution, score yourself on:

Dimension Points
Correctly named the anti-pattern or failure category 2
Identified the specific broken element 2
Proposed a fix that addresses the root cause (not just symptoms) 3
Fix preserves what was good about the original prompt 1
Total 8

A score of 6+ means you have a solid grasp of this failure mode. Below 4 means reviewing the referenced module section will help.

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