When a Slice Is Too Big
Sometimes you pick "one step" and it still goes wrong — the AI rewrites half the app, the diff is unreadable, and running it surfaces three new bugs at once. That's almost never bad luck. It's a signal that the slice was too big.
The fix is to cut it thinner. If "add favorites with persistence" blows up, that wasn't one slice; it was the whole feature wearing a single as a disguise. Back up to your last good and split it:
# Don't ask for this in one shot:
"Add a favorites feature with a counter and localStorage persistence."
# Ask for this instead, one commit each:
"Add a star button to each item card. No behavior yet."
"Make the star toggle filled/outline with local state."
"Add a counter that reflects the filled stars."
"Persist the favorited IDs to localStorage and load them on startup."
A good rule of thumb: if you can't describe what one step does in a single short sentence, it's two steps. And if a step's diff is too long to skim in a minute, the next one should be smaller. Slicing is a skill you get better at by feeling where the last slice was too thick.