root-cause-analysis

root-cause-analysis is a skill for Claude Code from arozumenko/sdlc-skills. It costs 64 tokens per session (994 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided investigation process for finding the exact cause of a confirmed software bug. It produces a structured report and does not change the code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect a bug report, follow the code path from its entry point to the failure, identify the violated assumption, and record the cause on the issue tracker.
Why use it?
It prevents developers from guessing at fixes before tracing the failure through the relevant parts of the codebase.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the sdlc-skills plugin — 53 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to inspect a bug report, follow the code path from its entry point to the failure, identify the violated assumption, and record the cause on the issue tracker.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add arozumenko/sdlc-skills --skill root-cause-analysis
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/arozumenko/sdlc-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install sdlc-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 53 skills.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for root-cause-analysis

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for root-cause-analysis

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/arozumenko/sdlc-skills/root-cause-analysis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 64 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 994 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00064 $0.00994
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00497
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00199
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00099

Measured 9d ago against content hash e7cdd5c9d70f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

root-cause-analysis 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 9d ago.

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.

bundles/feature-development/skills/root-cause-analysis/SKILL.md · 97 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 97 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Root-Cause Analysis (RCA)

Trace a confirmed bug to its exact cause and produce a structured RCA artifact. Investigation only — you do NOT edit code, branch, or fix.

Platform & systems

The RCA report goes on the tracker ticket — the source of truth — using the tracker scout recorded in .agents/profile.md § Project systems. The gh issue … commands below are the GitHub reference; translate per .agents/workflow.md § Git host. With no tracker, report directly to the user.

When to use

Pairs with systematic-debugging — use its rigor (reproduce reliably, condition-based waiting) to trace, then produce the structured report here.

Methodology — 4 phases

1. Ticket acquisition

Read the ticket and all comments (reproduction steps, errors, stack traces, environment, prior notes). Note that RCA has started on the ticket.

2. Codebase investigation — trace, don't guess

  • Locate the entry point: grep the error message / function / route.
  • Trace the call chain: entry (route/handler) → service (logic) → data layer → failure point. Read each file in the chain.
  • Examine the failure point: which assumption is violated? what input triggers it? is the bug here or in a dependency?
  • Search for patterns: how is the function called elsewhere; are there similar patterns that work; git blame and recent git log on the file.

3. Root-cause determination

Classify the cause:

Category Description Example
Logic Wrong condition, missing branch, off-by-one if x > 0 should be if x >= 0
Data Unexpected input, null handling, type mismatch Missing null check on optional field
Concurrency Race condition, missing lock, async issue Two requests mutating the same resource
Configuration Wrong default, missing env var Timeout too low for large payloads
Integration API contract / dependency version change Third-party API changed its response shape
Resource Memory, connection pool, file handles DB connection pool exhausted

Read the full file on GitHub · 97 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

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.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 97 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A e7cdd5c9d70f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

root-cause-analysis is a skill published in the GitHub repository arozumenko/sdlc-skills (20 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 994 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

debug-optimize-lcp

Guides debugging and optimizing Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) using Chrome DevTools MCP tools. Use this skill whenever the user asks about LCP performance, slow page loads, Core Web Vitals optimization, or wants to understand why their page's main content takes too long to appear. Also use when the user mentions…

ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp · 99 tokens

systematic-debugging

Use when debugging a failing test, build error, or runtime issue that isn't immediately obvious. Guides a 4-phase root cause analysis instead of random fix attempts.

open-metadata/OpenMetadata · 37 tokens

diagnose

Trace from a reproduced symptom to the source code that causes it. Pin the specific file and approximate line, rate confidence in the cause and clarity of the fix independently, and always propose a concrete fix.

emdash-cms/emdash · 43 tokens

repro-admin

Reproduce an EmDash admin UI bug. Attach a container, start the demo dev server, drive the admin with agent-browser using the dev-bypass session, and capture the reproduction as screenshots plus a replayable transcript.

emdash-cms/emdash · 48 tokens

log-error-digest

Analyze log files to troubleshoot errors, identify peak error periods, and produce error clustering, frequency statistics, and time distribution reports. Supports JSON, syslog, and Nginx formats with automatic detection. Use when a user uploads a .log file and asks to analyze errors, find patterns, debug issues, or…

zebbern/claude-code-guide · 71 tokens

byted-util-volcengine-detect-retry

An orchestration workflow for Volcengine Cloud Detect, a service that checks websites or network endpoints from test locations.

bytedance/agentkit-samples · 101 tokens