Trying to figure out how to use previous command exit code as argument in a command segment.

[CanvasofSpores]

Hey, so I have a command that I want to run in my prompt that uses my previously run command's exit code as an argument. I'm pretty sure that using $? is only giving me code 0 due to it being overwritten somewhere between me running my command, and everything in my prompt being generated and written to prompt.

For now, I'm just using echo $? as my command in substitute for the actual command I want to use because that's an easy way for me to see if the exit code is correct, and it seems to always be giving code 0 (success), even when my commands fail and show the proper code by the status segment

At this point, I'm not sure how I'd be able to either capture the command exit code, or if I could use the code given by the status segment somehow?