debug

A focused debugging guide for finding the single most likely root cause of a known software failure. It emphasizes narrow reproduction, concrete evidence, and the smallest recommended next fix.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to diagnose a specific error, reproduce the failure, identify its likely cause, and recommend the next corrective change.
Why use it?
It helps avoid broad, unfocused investigation when a command, test, hook, or runtime behavior is reproducibly failing.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bobbyjohnstx/tinycode/debug
Any agent
npx skills add bobbyjohnstx/tinycode --skill debug
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bobbyjohnstx/tinycode

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 664 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00041 $0.00664
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00332
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00133
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00066

Measured yesterday against content hash c68c24fada5b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

debug 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.

packages/tinycode/src/skill/defaults/debug/SKILL.md · 65 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 65 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Debug

Use this skill when a specific thing is broken and you need to find the root cause fast.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

  • The user says "debug", "why is this failing", "what broke", "X errors at runtime", or "this isn't working"
  • A command, test, or hook is producing an error or unexpected output
  • Session or orchestration behavior diverges from expectation in a reproducible way
  • The user wants a diagnosis and next-step recommendation, not a broad investigation

When Not to Use

  • The root cause is genuinely ambiguous with two or more competing explanations that need ranking — use trace
  • The task is to confirm a fix works, not to find the cause — use verify
  • The user wants broad cleanup or refactoring — use ai-slop-cleaner or code-reviewer
  • The user already knows the cause and wants it implemented — use executor

Examples

Good: "The pre-commit hook fired but didn't block the commit — debug why" → Inspect hook output, reproduce with a test commit, identify the misconfigured condition.

Bad: "Why is auth slow sometimes but not always? Could be the DB, the cache, or a race condition" → That needs competing hypotheses ranked with evidence. Use trace.

Bad: "Verify the auth fix worked" → Use verify.

Goal

Find the real failure signal quickly and explain the next corrective step.

Workflow

  1. Read the user's issue description carefully.
  2. Inspect the most relevant local evidence first:
    • failing tests or commands
    • logs and traces
    • relevant state or config files
  3. Attempt a narrow reproduction. If reproduction is not possible, state explicitly why and what evidence substitutes for it — do not proceed to a hypothesis without either a reproduction or a stated substitute.
  4. Distinguish symptoms from root cause.
  5. Recommend the smallest next fix or verification step.

Rules

  • Prefer real evidence over guesses.
  • When the issue involves orchestration, hooks, or agent flow, inspect logs, hook output, and config files first.
  • If the issue is actually a product/runtime bug rather than app code, say so plainly.
  • Do not prescribe broad rewrites before isolating the failure.

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 lines

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. yesterday First seen · 65 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A c68c24fada5b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

debug is a skill published in the GitHub repository bobbyjohnstx/tinycode (11 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 664 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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