Stack Trace Analysis

Stack traces are data, not noise. Every frame in a stack trace tells you: what function was executing, in what file, at what line, and in what order. Claude reads stack traces fluently — give it the full trace and it identifies the root cause frame, distinguishes your code from framework code, and traces the data flow that led to the error.

The effective prompt is: "Here is the stack trace. Identify which frame is the root cause (the deepest frame in our code, not in node_modules). Read that file and explain why the error occurred." Claude skips the framework frames, finds your code, reads the function, and explains the bug. For async errors where the stack trace is incomplete, add: "Check for any async operations in this call chain that might lose the stack."