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.
npx skills add dshakes/compass --skill systematic-debugginggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dshakes/compassWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dshakes/compass/systematic-debugging)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dshakes/compass/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dshakes/compass/systematic-debugging/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dshakes/compass/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dshakes/compass/systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00074 | $0.00456 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00030 | $0.00182 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00015 | $0.00091 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00046 |
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 1mo 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.
What it actually says
Systematic debugging
Fix the cause, not the symptom — and prove the cause before you touch code.
The method
- Reproduce — get a reliable, minimal repro (a failing test is ideal). No repro → no fix.
- Hypothesize — one specific, falsifiable guess about the cause ("X is null because Y").
- Prove it — instrument/log/inspect to confirm the hypothesis before editing. If the evidence contradicts it, form a new hypothesis. Don't guess-and-change.
- Minimal fix — change the smallest thing that addresses the proven root cause.
- Verify — re-run the repro; it passes. Run the surrounding tests; nothing regressed.
(See
verification-before-completion.) - Guard — add/extend a test that would have caught it, so it can't silently return.
For a nasty one, delegate to the debugger subagent (or the triage command) — it
forms a hypothesis, proves it, and proposes the minimal fix.
Red flags — you're not debugging, you're flailing
- Changing code before reproducing the problem.
- Fixing the symptom (swallow the error, bump the timeout) instead of the cause.
- Several changes at once — you won't know which one mattered.
- "It went away" with no explanation of why — it'll come back.
- Re-running hoping for a different result without changing your hypothesis.
Done means
Root cause proven (not assumed) · minimal fix · repro now green · a regression test added · no new failures. Anything less is UNVERIFIED.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 37 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 06acaa565b01
systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository dshakes/compass (20 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 456 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
4-phase root cause debugging: understand bugs before fixing.
triage-issues
Triage GitHub issues in the googleapis/mcp-toolbox repo: propose the correct labels (type / priority / product / status), check for duplicates, verify a bug has enough info to act on, and draft a triage comment. Use whenever a maintainer asks you to triage, label, categorize, prioritize, or "look at" an issue (or a…
agent-merge-conflict-arbiter
Neutral arbiter for merge conflicts between two agents.
python-debugpy
Debug Python: pdb REPL + debugpy remote (DAP).
sglang-diffusion-benchmark-profile
Use when benchmarking denoise latency or profiling a diffusion bottleneck in SGLang.
resolve-handoff
Emit the complete Resolve handoff with exact modes, outcomes, test evidence, and publication state.