principle-fix-root-causes

principle-fix-root-causes is a skill for Claude Code from koolamusic/claudefiles. It costs 42 tokens per session (270 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of principle-fix-root-causes, MIT.

A debugging method that reproduces a problem, follows its symptoms back to the underlying cause, and fixes that cause instead of masking it. It also checks whether the same faulty pattern appears elsewhere.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps investigate crashes, restart failures, stale files or caches, and errors that require logging or other direct evidence.
Why use it?
Workarounds such as extra checks can hide a bug while leaving the real problem in place. Finding the cause produces a clearer and more durable fix.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Part of the pstack plugin — 50 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit It helps investigate crashes, restart failures, stale files or caches, and errors that require logging or other direct evidence.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes
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 koolamusic/claudefiles --skill principle-fix-root-causes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/koolamusic/claudefiles

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 50 skills, 2 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 principle-fix-root-causes

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes/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 principle-fix-root-causes

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/koolamusic/claudefiles/principle-fix-root-causes.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 270 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 88% 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 5.1 $0.00042 $0.00270
Opus 5.5 $0.00017 $0.00108
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00008 $0.00054
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00027

Measured 2d ago against content hash ba4cd38da1dc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-fix-root-causes 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

88% identical to principle-fix-root-causes — 26 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.

plugins/pstack/skills/principle-fix-root-causes/SKILL.md · 24 lines

What it actually says

Fix Root Causes

When debugging, do not fix symptoms. Trace every problem to its root cause and fix it there.

Why: Symptom fixes accumulate. Each workaround makes the system harder to reason about, and the real bug remains. Root-cause fixes are slower upfront but reduce total debugging time.

Pattern:

  • Reproduce first
  • Ask "why" until you hit the root cause
  • Do not add guards (adding a nil check to silence a crash is a symptom fix)
  • If a workaround needs a paragraph-long comment to justify it, the code is wrong (fix the code, not the comment)
  • Check for the pattern, not just the instance (grep for the same pattern, fix all instances)
  • When stuck, instrument. Don't guess (add logging, read the actual error)

Restart bugs: suspect state before code

When something "fails after restart," suspect stale persistent state first: config files, caches, lock files, serialized state. If clearing a state file restores behavior, prioritize state validation as the fix.

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 · 24 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A ba4cd38da1dc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-fix-root-causes is a skill published in the GitHub repository koolamusic/claudefiles (130 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 270 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to principle-fix-root-causes, differing in 26 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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