systematic-debugging

What problem does it solve?

This Skill eliminates the frustration and wasted time of "guess-and-check" debugging. It provides a rigorous, four-phase framework to systematically identify the root cause of any bug or unexpected behavior, ensuring fixes are permanent, don't introduce new problems, and save significant development time.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Root Cause Investigation: Mandates careful error message analysis, consistent reproduction, and evidence gathering across multi-component systems before any fixes are attempted.
• Pattern Analysis: Guides you to compare broken code with working examples, identify differences, and understand dependencies to pinpoint the exact issue.
• Hypothesis-Driven Testing: Formulate a single, testable hypothesis and make the smallest possible change to validate it, preventing shotgun debugging and ensuring clarity.
• Use Case: A critical production API is down with a "Connection timeout" error. Instead of immediately adding a retry, use this skill to investigate recent changes, gather diagnostic logs across all components, and trace the data flow to find the exact point of failure and its underlying cause.

Quick Start

Phase 1: Root Cause Investigation - BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY FIX

1. Read Error Messages Carefully
2. Reproduce Consistently
3. Check Recent Changes
4. Gather Evidence in Multi-Component Systems
5. Trace Data Flow

Only after completing Phase 1, proceed to Phase 2.