What problem does it solve? When facing bugs, test failures, or unexpected behavior, developers often jump straight to symptom-level fixes that waste time and never address the real cause. This Skill enforces a disciplined four-phase debugging methodology that finds the root cause before any fix is attempted. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Four-Phase Framework: Root cause investigation, pattern analysis, hypothesis testing, and implementation, each with explicit pass criteria. - Anti-Shortcut Guardrails: Red-line rules and common-excuse tables that stop guesswork fixes, shotgun changes, and repeated failed attempts (3+ failures trigger architecture review). - Supporting Techniques: Includes root-cause tracing up the call stack, defense-in-depth validation across layers, condition-based waiting to replace flaky timeouts, and a bisection script to find polluting tests. - Use Case: A test fails intermittently in CI. Instead of adding arbitrary sleeps, follow Phase 1 to reproduce and gather evidence, trace the data flow to the source, then fix the root cause with a failing test proving the fix. ## Quick Start Use the systematic-debugging skill to investigate why this test is failing before suggesting any fix.
