systematic-debugging

A four-phase method for finding the root cause of software bugs: observe, form hypotheses, verify them, and then fix the problem.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for hotfixes, flaky tests, cross-module problems, and bugs that seemed fixed without a clear explanation.
Why use it?
It prevents unverified patches and makes the cause, reproduction steps, and evidence for a fix explicit.

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/kbwen/agent-virtual-office/systematic-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add KbWen/agent-virtual-office --skill systematic-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/KbWen/agent-virtual-office

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 431 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00028 $0.00431
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00216
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00086
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00043

Measured 2d ago against content hash 62c160464493, 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 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to systematic-debugging — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md · 57 lines

What it actually says

Systematic Debugging

Overview

The core of systematic debugging is: understand first, then fix. When encountering a bug, clarify symptoms, reproduction conditions, and blast radius. Draw hypotheses, verify them with experiments to isolate the root cause, and only then submit a minimal, verifiable fix.

Ironclad Rules

  1. No random patching: Do not submit fixes without root cause evidence.
  2. Change one variable at a time: Prevent unexplainable results from touching multiple areas at once.
  3. Fixes MUST include evidence: Include reproduction steps, verification, and regression results.

When to Use

  • Hotfix incident response.
  • Flaky tests.
  • Cross-module anomalies that aren't intuitively obvious.
  • Any "fixed but I don't know why" risk scenarios.

Four-Phase Process

Phase 1: Observe

  • Precisely record error messages, timestamps, and input conditions.
  • Create a Minimal Reproducible Example (MRE).
  • Mark the blast radius (affected modules/users).

Phase 2: Hypothesize

  • Propose 1–3 testable root cause hypotheses.
  • Design "falsifiable" checks for each hypothesis.
  • Prioritize high-probability, low-cost verifiable items.

Phase 3: Verify

  • Run experiments and retain output logs.
  • Adjust only one variable to confirm causality.
  • Remove falsified hypotheses to converge on the most likely root cause.

Phase 4: Fix

  • Implement a Minimal Fix.
  • Add a Regression Test.
  • Verify: The original error disappears AND existing behavior is not broken.

Common Mistakes

  • Modifying code before reproducing the issue.
  • Modifying too many files at once, failing to locate the effective fix point.
  • Treating "accidental passes" as root cause resolved.
  • Lacking regression tests, causing similar issues to happen again.
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. 2d ago First seen · 57 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 62c160464493

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository KbWen/agent-virtual-office (11 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 431 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to systematic-debugging, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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