What problem does it solve? Developers under time pressure often apply quick symptom fixes that fail repeatedly, causing thrashing, regressions, and wasted hours. This Skill enforces a disciplined debugging methodology that finds the actual root cause before any fix is attempted. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Four-Phase Process: Root cause investigation, pattern analysis, single-hypothesis testing, and verified implementation with failing test cases. - Supporting Techniques: Includes root-cause tracing through call stacks, defense-in-depth validation at multiple layers, and condition-based waiting to replace flaky arbitrary timeouts in tests. - Pressure Resistance: Explicit anti-patterns, red flags, and rationalization tables that stop shortcut fixes during emergencies, plus a rule to question the architecture after three failed fixes. - Use Case: When a production test fails intermittently, follow Phase 1 to reproduce and gather evidence across component boundaries, trace the bad value to its source, then fix at the origin with layered validation instead of adding another sleep timer. ## Quick Start Use the systematic-debugging skill to investigate this failing test and find its root cause before suggesting any fix.
