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Make One Small Change and Review the Diff1 / 2

2 min lesson

When the first diff grows

Describe the practical point in "The first clue is usually concrete: Accepting the hand-back without opening the diff", then say what it changes.

Step 1 of 2

The first clue is usually concrete: Accepting the hand-back without opening the diff.

Reject scope creep, then re-prompt tighter

0:42 · narrated
Read this demo as text
  1. A vague prompt came back with two changes bundled together — the reword you wanted, and a className rename nobody asked for. Reject it. Rejecting costs nothing; the file on disk never moved.
  2. Re-prompt tighter — name the exact string and the exact replacement. One hunk this time. Read it line by line: nothing rides along that you didn't ask for.
  3. Accept the clean hunk. Reject-and-re-prompt cost you seconds; untangling an accepted scope creep costs a whole review cycle.
Watch once: read the creep hunk → reject → re-prompt tighter → read the clean hunk → Accept.

Practice next: Now run the recovery walkthrough yourself: reject the scope creep, tighten the prompt, and accept only the clean hunk.

Simulated Cursor 3.12 (macOS, light) — beta educational reconstruction, not the real product.