What problem does it solve? Developers under time pressure often apply quick symptom fixes that fail repeatedly, causing hours of thrashing and recurring bugs. This Skill enforces a disciplined four-phase 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, hypothesis testing, and verified implementation with explicit gates between phases. - 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: Red flags, rationalization tables, and escalation rules (question the architecture after 3 failed fixes) keep the process intact during emergencies. - Use Case: A test suite has flaky failures from race conditions. Instead of adding longer sleep calls, use this Skill to trace the data flow, find the actual timing dependency, and replace arbitrary timeouts with condition-based polling. ## Quick Start Use the systematic-debugging skill to investigate this failing test and find its root cause before suggesting any fix.
