Don't answer the first question
The article discusses a strategy for effectively addressing user questions about a performance debugging tool called Perfetto. Instead of answering the initial question directly, the author emphasizes the importance of understanding the underlying issues that led to the question. This approach not only helps users gain a better understanding of the tool but also provides insights into potential product improvements.
- ▪The author suggests not answering the first version of a user's question to uncover deeper issues.
- ▪This method fosters valuable conversations that benefit both the user and the product developer.
- ▪Understanding the philosophy behind the tool is crucial for users to utilize it effectively.
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Record
| Original publisher | Lalit Maganti |
| Canonical URL | https://lalitm.com/post/dont-answer-the-first-question/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 17 May 2026 11:28:54 -0500 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-17T16:33:20.825Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-17T16:33:20.825Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | YYJpiVGYjOsY |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Don't answer the first questionMay 16, 2026· EssayIn my work on Perfetto, a performance debugging tool, one question I get often is: “how do I split a Perfetto trace into multiple files?” Instead of answering directly, I say: “there isn’t an easy way to do that, but what’s leading you to collect traces large enough to want to split?”This is one of my golden rules at work. When a user asks me something “weird”: don’t answer the first version of the question.On the surface this might appear like I’m talking about the XY problem, but that stops one step short. It treats the user’s stated question as a puzzle to decode: figure out what they really meant, answer that, move on.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Lalit Maganti.
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