systematic-debugging

systematic-debugging is a skill for Claude Code from KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude. It costs 61 tokens per session (1,177 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A debugging method that investigates the underlying cause of a bug, failed test, crash, or unexpected behaviour before changing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for reproducing failures, reading errors and stack traces, isolating causes, and then choosing a fix based on evidence.
Why use it?
It reduces guess-and-check fixes that address symptoms, fail to solve the issue, or create new problems.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: a Claude Code plugin manifest.

Part of the engineering plugin — 22 skills, 2 commands, 7 agents shipped together

Good fit It is for reproducing failures, reading errors and stack traces, isolating causes, and then choosing a fix based on evidence.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging
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 KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude --skill systematic-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install engineering, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 22 skills, 2 commands, 7 agents.

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 systematic-debugging

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for systematic-debugging

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/khaledsaeed18/dotclaude/systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 61 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,177 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 $0.00061 $0.01177
Opus 5.5 $0.00024 $0.00471
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00012 $0.00235
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00118

Measured 28d ago against content hash ce3e1901780c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, 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 28d 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.

.claude-plugin/plugins/engineering/skills/systematic-debugging/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.

Find the root cause before you touch a line of code. A fix that targets a symptom you don't understand either fails or moves the bug somewhere else, and each blind attempt makes the next one harder to reason about. Investigation first is not the slow path; it is the fast one.

The one rule

No fix before you can name the root cause. If you can't say "the bug happens because X", you are still investigating, not fixing. The moment you feel "let me just try changing this and see": stop. That instinct is the thing this skill exists to interrupt.

This holds hardest exactly when it feels most skippable: under time pressure, when the bug "looks simple", when you've already tried two things. Simple bugs have root causes too, and guess-and-check is slower than it feels because every wrong attempt has to be unwound.

Step 1: Investigate the root cause

Do all of this before forming any fix.

  • Read the actual error. The full message, the full stack trace, line numbers, error codes. The answer is often already written there. Don't skim past it to the part you assume is the problem.
  • Reproduce it reliably. What exact steps trigger it? Every time, or intermittently? If you can't reproduce it, you can't confirm a fix: gather more data rather than guessing.
  • Check what changed. git diff, recent commits, new dependencies, config or environment differences. A bug that just appeared usually has a recent cause.
  • Instrument the boundaries when the system has multiple layers (request → service → database, CI → build → sign). Log what enters and what leaves each boundary, run once, and read where the data first goes wrong. Find the failing layer with evidence before you reason about why that layer fails.
  • Trace the bad value to its origin. When the error surfaces deep in a call stack, work backward: where did this value come from, what passed it in, and up the chain until you reach the true source. Fix it there, not where it happened to blow up.

Step 2: Compare against what works

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 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. 28d ago Changed · +4 lines ce3e1901780c
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 61 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A 019453806e3d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude (5 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 1,177 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

ast-grep

Searches and rewrites code by AST shape across 25 languages. Use when the target is a syntax pattern (every call/class/import shaped like X, a codemod, a YAML rule) rather than literal text; for plain strings, comments, or filenames, use rg.

code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent · 61 tokens

debugging

Runs a hypothesis-driven debugging loop across any language or binary, escalating to orthogonal oracle angles and locking the fix with a failing test. Use for crashes, silent failures, hangs, wrong responses, memory leaks, async misbehavior, or reverse engineering.

code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent · 53 tokens

lcx-doctor

Diagnose LazyCodex and Codex CLI installation health against the latest sources. Use whenever the user asks for a doctor or health check, says LazyCodex, lazycodex-ai, omo-codex, or Codex behaves oddly after an install, update, or config change, suspects a stale, drifted, or broken setup, or wants the local install…

code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent · 93 tokens

lcx-report-bug

Create a high-signal bug issue or PR in the repo that owns the defect. Use this whenever the user asks to report, file, open, or triage a LazyCodex, lazycodex-ai, omo-codex, Codex plugin, or upstream Codex CLI bug, especially when they need source-backed root cause, reproduction steps, fix guidance, and GitHub routing.

code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent · 85 tokens

remove-deadcode

Remove unused code from this project with ultrawork mode, LSP-verified safety, atomic commits. Triggers: remove dead code, dead code, cleanup, remove unused.

code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent · 41 tokens

code-review-web

Review web application code for bugs, security issues, performance problems, and stack-specific anti-patterns. Use this skill whenever the user wants to review code, debug a production issue, investigate a build failure, audit security, or check a PR before merging. Triggers on code review, review my code, debug…

rampstackco/claude-skills · 121 tokens