March 2025.

Chat with Claude. Fixing imports.

"Fix the import for UserService."

Fixes it. Breaks something else.

"Now AuthController can't find it."

Fixes AuthController. Breaks UserService again.

"You just broke what you fixed."

Tries to fix both. Makes it worse.

1.5 hours of this. Going in circles. The context is now full of its own failed attempts, and it's trying to account for all of them, getting more confused with each message.

Ctrl+Shift+N.

New browser window. New chat. Copy the current file, paste it, same task.

"Fix the import for UserService."

15 seconds. Done. Works.

Fresh context. No history of failures. No accumulated confusion.

Now I know the signs: more than 3 attempts at one error, answers getting longer and more convoluted, AI repeating what already didn't work. When I see any of these - I don't push through. I just open a new chat.

The only thing - save your progress before closing. Commit, or at least copy the last working state somewhere. New chat doesn't know how you got here, and that's exactly the point.