Individual skill

debugging

Systematic root-cause debugging: reproduce, investigate, hypothesize, fix with verification. Use when asked to "debug this", "fix this bug", "why is this failing", "troubleshoot", or mentions errors, stack traces, broken tests, flaky tests, regressions, or unexpected behavior.

distillery/generated-skills/debugging/SKILL.md

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Repository stars (not skill ratings): 36
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# Debugging

## The Iron Law

Never propose a fix without first identifying the root cause. "Quick fix now, investigate later" is forbidden — it creates harder bugs.

## Process

**1. Reproduce** — make the bug consistent. If intermittent, run N times under stress or simulate poor conditions (slow network, low memory) until it triggers reliably.

**2. Investigate** — trace backward through the call chain from the symptom. Add diagnostic logging at each component boundary. Compare working vs broken state using a differential table (environment, version, data, timing — what changed?).

**3. Hypothesize and test** — one change at a time. If a hypothesis is wrong, fully revert before testing the next. Use `git bisect` to find regressions efficiently.