Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to xg-gh-25/SwarmAI. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xg-gh-25/SwarmAI/main/.kiro/steering/debugging-methodology.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xg-gh-25/SwarmAIWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/xg-gh-25/swarmai/debugging-methodology)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/xg-gh-25/swarmai/debugging-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/xg-gh-25/swarmai/debugging-methodology.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00459 | $0.00459 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00230 | $0.00230 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00092 | $0.00092 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00046 | $0.00046 |
Grade A, and why
SwarmAI debugging-methodology.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
What it actually says
Debugging Methodology
Rules for diagnosing issues in this project. Learned from real incidents.
Shell Variable Issues
-
Empty/undefined variable → git blame FIRST, then fix
grep -rn "VAR_NAME=" **/*.shto find if it's defined anywheregit log --all -p -- <file> | grep VAR_NAMEto find when it was removed/renamed- Understand WHY it's missing before adding a definition
- Never duplicate path definitions — find the single source of truth
-
Single source of truth for paths
scripts/daemon-lib.showns: BACKEND_BUNDLE_DIR, BACKEND_BINARY, DAEMON_DIR, DAEMON_BINARY, DAEMON_PORTdev.shandprod.shsource it — never redefine these variables in them
Daemon / launchd Issues
- "Backend failed to start" diagnosis order:
nc -z 127.0.0.1 18321— is port responding?launchctl list | grep swarmai— is the agent loaded? (PID column = running)tail -20 ~/.swarm-ai/logs/backend-daemon.log— startup errors?tail -20 ~/.swarm-ai/logs/backend-stderr.log— crash output?- If agent not loaded:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.swarmai.backend.plist
General Debugging Discipline
-
Don't say "transient" without evidence
- If the user can reproduce it, it's not transient
- Reproduce it yourself or trace the exact code path
-
Trace errors to their source, don't patch symptoms
PermissionError: ''→ who passed the empty string? → which variable? → where should it be defined?- Follow the call chain backwards, don't guess forward
-
Refactoring verification
- When a variable is renamed/moved: grep ALL consumers, not just the definition
set -uin scripts catches undefined variables — recommend adding it
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- yesterday First seen · 39 lines · 459 tokens per session scan A f76705060197
SwarmAI debugging-methodology.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository xg-gh-25/SwarmAI (44 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 459 tokens to every session, about $0.0023 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-06.
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