1 min lesson
Symptom is not root cause
Use "The root cause might be a corporate proxy returning 407 on the completions endpoint" to say what you would do next.
Step 1 of 2
Symptom is not root causethe distinction interviewers listen for
The user reports "autocomplete stopped working." That's the symptom. The root cause might be a corporate proxy returning 407 on the completions endpoint. Fix the proxy allowlist and the symptom evaporates; tell the user to restart Cursor and you've treated nothing. Always carry both in your head and say both out loud.
Announce your loop in the first 30 seconds. "Let me reproduce it first, then isolate, then I'll form a hypothesis I can test." It tells the interviewer you have a method before you've found anything - and it earns you patience while you work.
Silent debugging reads as luck. If you go quiet for two minutes and then announce the answer, the interviewer can't tell whether you reasoned to it or recognized it. Narrate the dead ends too - a discarded hypothesis is evidence of method.
“Before I fix anything I want a reliable repro, because I can't tell a fix from a coincidence without one. Then I'll change one thing at a time until the symptom and the cause line up.”