interrogation-debugging

interrogation-debugging is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from kucherenko/gangsta. It costs 35 tokens per session (2,057 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured debugging process for bugs, failed tests, build failures, performance problems, and other unexpected behavior. It requires investigating the underlying cause before suggesting a fix.

In plain words
What is it for?
Collecting evidence, reproducing failures, tracing symptoms to their root cause, testing hypotheses, and preparing a justified fix.
Why use it?
It avoids quick patches that hide the real problem or create new failures.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the gangsta plugin — 19 skills, 6 agents, 1 hook shipped together

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/kucherenko/gangsta/interrogation-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add kucherenko/gangsta --skill interrogation-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kucherenko/gangsta

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install gangsta, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 19 skills, 6 agents, 1 hook.

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 interrogation-debugging

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/interrogation-debugging.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/interrogation-debugging)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/interrogation-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/interrogation-debugging.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,057 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 $0.00035 $0.02057
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.01028
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00411
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00206

Measured 5d ago against content hash b9ca126a6729, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

interrogation-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 5d 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/interrogation-debugging/SKILL.md · 260 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 260 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The Interrogation: Systematic Debugging

Overview

Random fixes waste time and create new bugs. Quick patches let the real rat walk free.

Core principle: ALWAYS find the root cause before attempting fixes. Symptom fixes are invalid.

Violating the letter of this process is violating the spirit of debugging.

The Iron Law

NO FIXES WITHOUT ROOT CAUSE INVESTIGATION FIRST

If you haven't completed The Brief, you cannot propose fixes. This is Omerta.

When to Use

Use for ANY technical issue:

  • Test failures
  • Bugs in production
  • Unexpected behavior
  • Performance problems
  • Build failures
  • Integration issues

Use this ESPECIALLY when:

  • Under time pressure (emergencies make guessing tempting)
  • "Just one quick fix" seems obvious
  • You've already tried multiple fixes
  • Previous fix didn't work
  • You don't fully understand the issue

Don't skip when:

  • Issue seems simple (simple bugs have root causes too)
  • You're in a hurry (rushing guarantees rework)
  • The Don wants it fixed NOW (systematic is faster than thrashing)

The Four Phases

You MUST complete each phase before proceeding to the next.

The Brief

BEFORE attempting ANY fix:

  1. Read the Evidence

    • Don't skip past errors or warnings
    • They often contain the exact solution
    • Read stack traces completely
    • Note line numbers, file paths, error codes
  2. Reproduce the Crime

    • Can you trigger it reliably?
    • What are the exact steps?
    • Does it happen every time?
    • If not reproducible → gather more data, don't guess
  3. Check Recent Activity

    • What changed that could cause this?
    • Git diff, recent commits
    • New dependencies, config changes
    • Environmental differences
  4. Gather Evidence at Every Boundary

    WHEN system has multiple components (CI → build → signing, API → service → database):

    BEFORE proposing fixes, add diagnostic instrumentation:

    For EACH component boundary:

    • Log what data enters the component
    • Log what data exits the component
    • Verify environment/config propagation
    • Check state at each layer

Read the full file on GitHub · 260 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. 5d ago First seen · 260 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A b9ca126a6729

Subscribe to this mod's changes

interrogation-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository kucherenko/gangsta (80 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 2,057 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 2026-08-30.