Four habits that separate frustration from flow:
- Plan before code. Start bigger requests with "make a plan first and show me before building". Cheap to fix a plan, expensive to fix a build.
- Show, do not describe. If something looks wrong, screenshot it and paste the image into the terminal chat. "Make it look like this sketch" also works.
- Fresh starts. When a conversation gets long and confused, type /clear and restate the goal cleanly.
- Ongoing projects. If you keep coming back to one project, run /init once. It writes a CLAUDE.md memory file so every future session starts already understanding your project.
Why this works
A conversation has a finite working memory, the context window. A long confused chat drags every old wrong turn along with it. /clear empties the window, which is why a fresh start often beats pushing on.
Practice
Screenshot your page from Lesson 16, paste it in, and say what bothers you visually. Watch it fix the thing you pointed at.
Done when: you have fixed something with a screenshot instead of a paragraph of description.