systematic-debugging

systematic-debugging is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from bostonaholic/rpikit. It costs 38 tokens per session (1,434 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A step-by-step method for finding the underlying cause of software bugs and failures. It emphasizes collecting evidence and reproducing the problem before changing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Investigating test failures, error messages, unexpected behavior, recent changes, and other software problems before implementing a fix.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork and helps prevent quick fixes that hide the real problem or create new ones.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the rpikit plugin — 16 skills, 7 agents shipped together

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/bostonaholic/rpikit/systematic-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add bostonaholic/rpikit --skill systematic-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bostonaholic/rpikit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install rpikit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 7 agents.

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 systematic-debugging

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bostonaholic/rpikit/systematic-debugging.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bostonaholic/rpikit/systematic-debugging)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bostonaholic/rpikit/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bostonaholic/rpikit/systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,434 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 $0.00038 $0.01434
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00717
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00287
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00143

Measured 5d ago against content hash 8f02e2a7ad28, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

systematic-debugging 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 5d 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.

skills/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md · 250 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 250 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Systematic Debugging

Find the root cause before attempting fixes. Symptom fixes are failure.

Purpose

Debugging without methodology wastes time and creates new bugs. Random fixes address symptoms, not causes. This skill enforces systematic investigation to find root causes before any fix is attempted.

The Iron Law

ALWAYS find root cause before attempting fixes.

Quick patches mask underlying issues. If you're trying fixes without understanding why they might work, you're guessing - stop and investigate.

The Four Phases

Complete each phase in order. Do not skip to implementation.

Phase 1: Root Cause Investigation

Understand what's happening before theorizing why.

  1. Read the error carefully

    • Full error message, not just the first line
    • Stack trace - where did it originate?
    • Error codes or types
  2. Reproduce consistently

    • Can you trigger the failure reliably?
    • What are the exact steps?
    • Does it fail the same way every time?
  3. Review recent changes

    • What changed since it last worked?
    • Check git log for recent commits
    • Any new dependencies or configuration?
  4. Gather diagnostic evidence

    • Add logging at key points
    • Check system state (memory, disk, network)
    • Inspect input data
  5. Trace backwards

    • Start from the error
    • Work backwards through the call stack
    • Find where correct behavior diverges

Phase 2: Pattern Analysis

Compare against working code.

  1. Find similar working code

    • How does a working version do this?
    • What's different about this case?
  2. Compare against references

    • Documentation examples
    • Library/framework conventions
    • Previous implementations
  3. Identify the difference

    • What's unique about the failing case?
    • What assumption is being violated?
  4. Understand dependencies

    • What does this code depend on?
    • Could a dependency have changed?
    • Are versions correct?

Phase 3: Hypothesis and Testing

Read the full file on GitHub · 250 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. 5d ago First seen · 250 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 8f02e2a7ad28

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository bostonaholic/rpikit (20 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,434 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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