Individual skill
five-whys
Use for the 5 Whys, or when the user wants the root cause of a failure: "why did this happen?", "this keeps breaking", "write the postmortem", "find the real cause". Asks why repeatedly with evidence at each step, then sets countermeasures. Skip for one-off typos or when the cause is already proven.
cli-tool/components/skills/productivity/five-whys/SKILL.md
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- Last checked
- Nov 4, 2026
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- License
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SKILL.mdcore · 3,583 bytesreferences/example.mddoc · 1,727 bytes
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# Five Whys
A root-cause method from the Toyota Production System. Ask "why" of the previous answer until you reach a cause you can change, and check each link with evidence.
## When to use
- An incident, outage, defect, missed deadline or process failure needs its real cause.
- A problem repeats after quick fixes.
- A postmortem or retrospective needs a causal chain, not a list of symptoms.
Skip: a typo or one-line bug whose cause is already visible, or questions about metrics that need data analysis rather than a causal chain.
## Before you start
