A Perfetto engineer describes a debugging tactic that goes against instinct: when a user asks something strange, don't answer it. Someone once wanted to split traces into multiple files. Rather than explaining how, the engineer asked what was driving the need. Turns out they actually needed periodic trace snapshots—short repeated recordings that removed the need for one long trace at all.

The technique goes beyond solving the XY problem. By challenging the stated question, the engineer discovers where the product confuses people. Users leave with a better understanding of Perfetto, and the engineer spots design gaps. A mental checklist helps: has this been seen before? Does the question fit the tool's design?

Users often treat traces as a universal metric source, but that philosophy clashes with how the tool works. Traces collect all system data, which is expensive compared to dedicated metric systems. The engineer's role extends beyond tool documentation—it's teaching performance engineering fundamentals and recognizing when a request signals something genuinely new.

The pull to respond quickly is constant, but holding back reveals more. This discipline helped trace merging launch maintainably and avoided an ad-hoc UI customization system that created years of technical debt. The first version of a question is rarely the real one.