systematic-debugging

systematic-debugging is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from magnus919/agent-skills. It costs 83 tokens per session (3,899 once invoked), scanned C, a copy of systematic-debugging, MIT.

A four-phase method for finding the underlying cause of technical problems before changing code or configuration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate test failures, production bugs, build errors, performance issues, and integration problems.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork and avoids quick fixes that hide the real problem or create new failures.

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/magnus919/agent-skills/systematic-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add magnus919/agent-skills --skill systematic-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin systematic-debugging/plugin install systematic-debugging after adding the marketplace above.

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/magnus919/agent-skills/systematic-debugging.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/systematic-debugging)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 83 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,899 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin 94% 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 $0.00083 $0.03899
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.01950
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00780
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00390

Measured yesterday against content hash 1c6ac5f63950, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

systematic-debugging scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 yesterday.

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.

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

2. Reset the app container (`rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/<bundle-id>/`)
Origin

This is a copy

94% identical to systematic-debugging — 29 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.

systematic-debugging/SKILL.md · 445 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 445 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Systematic Debugging

Overview

Random fixes waste time and create new bugs. Quick patches mask underlying issues.

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

The Iron Law

NO FIXES WITHOUT ROOT CAUSE INVESTIGATION FIRST

If you haven't completed Phase 1, you cannot propose fixes.

When to Use

Use for ANY technical issue:

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

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)
  • Someone wants it fixed NOW (systematic is faster than thrashing)

The Four Phases

Complete each phase before proceeding to the next.


Phase 1: Root Cause Investigation

BEFORE attempting ANY fix:

1. Read Error Messages Carefully

  • Don't skip past errors or warnings — they often contain the exact solution
  • Read stack traces completely. Note line numbers, file paths, error codes
  • Action: Read the relevant source files at the error locations and search the codebase for the error string to find all related code paths.

2. Reproduce Consistently

  • Can you trigger it reliably? What are the exact steps?
  • If not reproducible → gather more data, don't guess
  • Action: Run the failing test or trigger the bug:
pytest tests/test_module.py::test_name -v --tb=long

3. Check Recent Changes

  • What changed that could cause this? Git diff, recent commits, new dependencies, config changes
  • Action:
git log --oneline -10
git diff
git log -p --follow src/problematic_file.py | head -100

4. Gather Evidence in Multi-Component Systems

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

Read the full file on GitHub · 445 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files 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. yesterday First seen · 445 lines · 83 tokens per session scan C 1c6ac5f63950

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository magnus919/agent-skills (66 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 83 tokens to every session and 3,899 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (recursive force delete). It is 94% identical to systematic-debugging, differing in 29 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

cocoreview

CocoReview — structured code review with six-severity findings vocabulary, progressive disclosure architecture, and universal anti-pattern baseline. Invoked via $review [file] [--complexity] [--security] [--architecture] [--language ].

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 57 tokens

cocoharvest

Decompose an approved plan into parallel workstreams, assign specialist personas, classify stages as HITL or AFK (CocoLens), generate flow.json stages with checkpoints and dual-file state, and create per-stage prompt files. Includes adaptive parallelism, stall detection, shell identity injection, and consecutive…

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 68 tokens

spec

Enter the Spec phase of CocoBrew. Guides the developer through structured requirements capture: goal, success criteria, constraints, personas involved, data sources, and deliverables. Writes spec.md to .cocoplus/lifecycle/ and creates a git commit.

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 53 tokens

discuss

Run a structured decision-capture dialogue before $plan — locks implementation choices (model, evaluation methodology, accuracy threshold, scope boundaries) into discuss.md to prevent silent decision drift during planning. Supports --red-team flag for adversarial post-PASS challenge session.

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 54 tokens

cocoscout

Relevance-ranked context loading — Tier 2 async subagent (Haiku, <5s) that fires after Tier 1 deterministic checks in UserPromptSubmit. Injects ranked context from CocoGrove, CocoContext, Environment Inspector, Prompt Studio, and CocoDream.

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 59 tokens

bloom

Run a structured four-question working-backwards dialogue before $spec — commits the developer to the outcome (beneficiary, core capability, constraints, press release) before specification begins, anchoring all downstream phases to the original intent.

Snowflake-Labs/cocoplus · 47 tokens