debugging

A systematic bug-investigation guide for finding the cause of an observed failure or unexpected behavior before changing code. It uses the error details, reproduction steps, related project notes, and recent changes as evidence.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for a reproducible bug, test failure, unexpected behavior, or a failure discovered during implementation.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork and helps avoid fixes that only hide the symptom while leaving the real cause in place.

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/jstoup111/ai-conductor/debugging
Any agent
npx skills add jstoup111/ai-conductor --skill debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jstoup111/ai-conductor

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,594 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 $0.00048 $0.01594
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00797
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00319
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00159

Measured 2d ago against content hash 01d49750f8a5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 2d 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/debugging/SKILL.md · 149 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 149 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Prevents shotgun debugging by enforcing systematic root cause investigation before any fix is attempted. Evidence-based diagnosis catches the real problem instead of treating symptoms.

Correctness gate: a root-cause theory is a claim. Per the /verify-claims protocol, state it with a grounded confidence % and its basis, and do not fix on it until the evidence puts it high — a plausible-but-unverified theory produces a band-aid, not a fix.

Practices

Phase 1: Investigate

GATE: No fix proposals until investigation is complete.

  1. Read the error. Fully. Not just the first line — the full stack trace, log output, and context.

  2. Reproduce. Can you make it happen reliably?

    • If yes: note the exact reproduction steps
    • If intermittent: note the conditions under which it occurs and doesn't occur
  3. Recall related memory. Before investigating further:

    • Search .memory/gotchas/ for entries related to the error message, affected files, or domain area
    • Search .memory/patterns/ for entries about how similar code paths work
    • If a relevant gotcha exists, test it as your first hypothesis
  4. Check what changed. What's different from when it last worked?

    • git log --oneline -10 — recent commits
    • git diff — uncommitted changes
    • Environment changes (new dependency versions, config changes)
  5. Gather evidence. Before forming theories:

    • Read the failing code path line by line
    • Add temporary logging/debugging output at key points
    • Check input data — is it what you expect?
    • Check database state — are records in the expected state?
    • If tech-context loaded: use stack-specific tools (e.g., rails console, binding.pry)

Phase 2: Pattern Analysis

  1. Find a working example. Is there similar code that works correctly?

    • Compare the working and broken versions
    • What's different?
  2. Check for known patterns. Cross-reference findings with .memory/gotchas/ recalled in step 3.

Read the full file on GitHub · 149 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. 2d ago First seen · 149 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A 01d49750f8a5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository jstoup111/ai-conductor (5 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 1,594 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 2026-08-31.

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