structured-debug

A structured process for investigating software bugs and regressions before changing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Recording expected and actual behavior, searching past incidents, collecting environment details, testing hypotheses, comparing fix options, and verifying the final change.
Why use it?
It separates the observed problem from assumptions by reproducing the issue, testing possible causes, agreeing on a fix plan, and checking the result.

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/codeaholicguy/ai-devkit/structured-debug
Any agent
npx skills add codeaholicguy/ai-devkit --skill structured-debug
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/codeaholicguy/ai-devkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 79 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 582 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 $0.00079 $0.00582
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00291
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00116
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00058

Measured yesterday against content hash f3556f33cdd2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

structured-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.

skills/structured-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.

Local Debugging Assistant

Debug with an evidence-first workflow before changing code.

Hard Rule

  • Do not modify code until the user approves a selected fix plan.

Workflow

  1. Clarify
  • Restate observed vs expected behavior in one concise diff.
  • Confirm scope and measurable success criteria.
  • Before investigating, search for similar past incidents: npx ai-devkit@latest memory search --query "<observed behavior>" --tags "debug,root-cause"
  1. Reproduce
  • Capture minimal reproduction steps.
  • Capture environment fingerprint: runtime, versions, config flags, data sample, and platform.
  1. Hypothesize and Test For each hypothesis, include:
  • Predicted evidence if true.
  • Disconfirming evidence if false.
  • Exact test command or check.
  • Prefer one-variable-at-a-time tests.
  1. Plan
  • Present fix options with risks and verification steps.
  • Recommend one option and request approval.

Validation

  • Confirm a pre-fix failing signal exists.
  • Confirm post-fix success using the verify skill — including regression verification for bug fixes.
  • Summarize remaining risks and follow-ups.
  • Store root cause and fix for future sessions: npx ai-devkit@latest memory store --title "<root cause>" --content "<diagnosis and fix>" --tags "debug,root-cause"

Task Tracing

If task tracing is usable, choose a short kebab-case debug task name when no task name exists, then use task optionally: record repro/final results as evidence, the current hypothesis as next, and blockers only when they materially affect progress. Never block debugging because task tracing is unavailable.

Red Flags and Rationalizations

Rationalization Why It's Wrong Do Instead
"I already know the cause" Assumptions skip evidence Reproduce and prove it first
"This is urgent, just fix it" A wrong fix wastes more time 10 minutes of diagnosis saves hours
"The fix is obvious from the stack trace" Stack traces show symptoms, not causes Trace backward to the root cause

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 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. yesterday First seen · 65 lines · 79 tokens per session scan A f3556f33cdd2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

structured-debug is a skill published in the GitHub repository codeaholicguy/ai-devkit (1,601 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 79 tokens to every session and 582 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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