investigate

investigate is a skill for Claude Code from christyjacob4/claude-tricks. It costs 118 tokens per session (2,102 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured investigation workflow for bugs, slow performance, or unexpected behavior. It gathers evidence, compares possible causes, and produces a report with the likely root cause and recommendations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to diagnose software problems, investigate regressions, and document findings and next steps.
Why use it?
It replaces guesswork with an organized search through errors, logs, recent changes, and related information.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

Part of the claude-tricks plugin — 10 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to diagnose software problems, investigate regressions, and document findings and next steps.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate
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 christyjacob4/claude-tricks --skill investigate
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/christyjacob4/claude-tricks

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-tricks, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 1 agent.

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 investigate

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate/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 investigate

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/christyjacob4/claude-tricks/investigate.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 118 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,102 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.
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 $0.00118 $0.02102
Opus 5 $0.00059 $0.01051
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00420
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00210

Measured 10d ago against content hash 3044bd798ac6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

investigate 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 10d 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/investigate/SKILL.md · 252 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 252 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Deep Investigation

Thorough investigation of issues with root cause analysis and recommendations.

OUTPUT: Detailed report with findings, root cause, and recommendations.

Arguments

  • $ARGUMENTS - Issue description, error message, or area to investigate

Phase 1: Define the Problem (Parallel: Hypotheses + Data Gathering)

Launch two parallel agents immediately. Both can work simultaneously since forming hypotheses from the issue description is independent from gathering raw data.

Agent 1 - Hypotheses Formation:

Analyze the issue description: $ARGUMENTS

Form 3-5 ranked hypotheses about what might be causing this issue. For each hypothesis, state:

  • The suspected cause
  • Why this is plausible given the symptoms
  • What evidence would confirm or refute it

Return a numbered list of hypotheses with supporting reasoning.

Agent 2 - Data Gathering:

Gather all available data about: $ARGUMENTS

Collect in parallel where possible:

  • Error messages and stack traces (search logs, output files, CI artifacts)
  • Recent changes to affected areas (git log --oneline -30 -- path/to/affected/)
  • Related issues or discussions (search issue trackers if available)
  • Current state of affected code paths (read the relevant source files)
  • Environment and configuration state

Return all raw findings organized by category.

Wait for both agents to complete. Combine their outputs to form the investigation plan for Phase 2.

Phase 2: Evidence Collection (Parallel: 4 Independent Agents)

Launch four parallel agents, one per evidence dimension. These are completely independent investigations that share no dependencies.

Agent 1 - Code Analysis:

Investigate the code paths related to: $ARGUMENTS

Using the hypotheses: [insert hypotheses from Phase 1]

Analyze:

  • All code paths involved in the issue (read source files, trace call chains)
  • Recent changes to affected areas (git log -p --since="2 weeks ago" -- path/to/affected/)
  • Dependencies and their versions
  • Integration points between components
  • Any relevant design patterns or architectural decisions that could contribute

For each hypothesis, note which code evidence supports or contradicts it. Return detailed code-level findings with exact file paths and line numbers.

Read the full file on GitHub · 252 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. 10d ago First seen · 252 lines · 118 tokens per session scan A 3044bd798ac6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

investigate is a skill published in the GitHub repository christyjacob4/claude-tricks (2 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 118 tokens to every session and 2,102 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

pero-ponte-sueter

Use when writing code that touches input, I/O, network, parsing, persistence, concurrency, or lifecycle boundaries, to handle the null, empty, malformed, timed-out, partial, and failed paths before the happy path is called finished. NOT for hostile input, injection, or secrets; use ya-te-lavaste-las-manos.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 75 tokens

recoge-tu-tiradero

Use after debugging or experimentation, before final evidence or handoff, to remove residue you created that the solution does not need — trace logs, scratch files, .only, temporary flags, abandoned deps. NOT for the handoff gate itself; use vienen-las-visitas. NOT for unreproducible state; use por-si-se-ocupa.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 77 tokens

ya-comiste

Use when a failure may come from an unavailable or misconfigured environment — service down, dependency or version missing, unset or expired credential, exhausted port, disk, or memory, unreachable host — before you debug application code. NOT for stale state you created this session; use el-vaporub.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 63 tokens

el-vaporub

Use at the very start of a failure investigation, before forming any theory, to rule out your own stale state — unsaved file, unrestarted process, stale cache, wrong branch or worktree, wrong file, outdated build output. Run the ladder once. NOT for an unavailable or misconfigured environment; use ya-comiste.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 71 tokens

pero-no-haces-caso

Use after a bug, failure, regression, or rework, to check whether you yourself flagged this exact problem earlier in this session and it was not acted on. Quote your earlier words verbatim or say nothing at all. NOT for late-arriving new scope; use no-se-te-olvide-que.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 70 tokens

y-si-lo-encuentro-que

Use before reporting that a repository file, path, symbol, function, route, config key, or dependency is absent or cannot be found. NOT for unverified claims about an external library, API, or platform; use cadena-de-whatsapp.

mcasillas17/mexican-mom · 59 tokens