root-cause-trace

What problem does it solve?

Bugs and errors often surface far from their origin, leading to patching the symptom instead of the trigger. This skill documents a systematic backward walk to identify the original trigger in the call chain, enabling fixes at the source and the addition of defender layers to prevent recurrence.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Backward-trace workflow: observe symptom, identify immediate cause, walk the call chain, find origin, and implement a fix with layered defenses.
• Instrumentation guidance: insert stack traces and contextual logs before dangerous operations to capture runtime data.
• Test-pollution diagnosis and defense design: patterns to detect polluted states and build robust guardrails across system layers.

Quick Start

Follow the five-step workflow to observe the symptom, identify the immediate cause, walk the call chain, find the original trigger, and implement a fix with defense-in-depth.