Debug an AI-built app without losing your progress

Your outcome

Find why a task appears to save but disappears after refresh, make one justified repair, and prove the same reproduction now succeeds. All deliberately broken code stays inside the downloadable exercise.

Before you change anything

Download the shared task tracker. You need Node.js 20+ for its checks and a browser with localStorage. The archive includes a filled brief.md, bug-report.md, and blank report and verification templates. Use Debug an app for diagnosis and App and workspace blueprint for the evidence records.

In a real project, inspect git status --short and git diff first. Save a reviewed checkpoint of the work you intend to preserve; do not discard another person's changes or commit secrets. Record the current revision and whether the failure started after a particular change.

1. Reproduce from a known starting state

Extract the archive and open examples/task-tracker/index.html?mode=broken in a fresh browser context. Add "Review the release". The row and "Task saved." appear. Refresh: the new row disappears. This violates AC-2 from the planning guide, even though AC-1 passed.

From examples/task-tracker, run:

node verify.cjs --mode broken

Expected: exit 1 with AC-2 in the failure. A missing Node executable or missing is a setup problem, not the demonstrated product defect.