debugging

A rule set for adding links and other references supplied by the user to docs/research/references.md.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it whenever the user provides a URL, paper, blog post, or other external reference that belongs in the project documentation.
Why use it?
It keeps research sources recorded in one place and avoids duplicate or poorly categorised references.

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,010 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 $0.00050 $0.02010
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.01005
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00402
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00201

Measured 2d ago against content hash f80cb9aa9dcd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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.

.claude/skills/debugging/SKILL.md · 201 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 201 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Debugging Skill

You use the debug_state tool and Opal's runtime introspection to diagnose problems during a session. This skill teaches you when and how to self-diagnose.

When to act

  • A tool call fails unexpectedly or returns surprising results.
  • The agent seems stuck in a loop or keeps retrying the same action.
  • You suspect context is getting large and may be near the token limit.
  • A feature (sub-agents, skills) doesn't seem to be working.
  • The user asks you to debug yourself or inspect your own state.

The debug feature is disabled by default

The debug_state tool and the in-memory event log are gated behind the debug feature flag, which is off by default. If you try to call debug_state and the tool isn't available, tell the user they need to enable it first.

How the user enables debug mode

From the TUI menu: Press Ctrl+\ (or the configured menu hotkey) to open the Opal Menu, then toggle Debug introspection on. This takes effect immediately for the current session.

From Elixir code:

Opal.start_session(%{
  features: %{debug: %{enabled: true}}
})

Via application config:

config :opal,
  features: %{debug: %{enabled: true}}

When debug is enabled, Opal keeps an in-memory event log (bounded ring buffer of the last 400 events) and exposes the debug_state tool. When debug is disabled, the event log is cleared and the tool is filtered out of the active tool set.

Using debug_state

Basic snapshot (no messages, no events)

debug_state({})

Returns: session ID, model info, provider, working directory, token usage, tool availability, and queue state.

With recent events

debug_state({"event_limit": 100})

The event_limit parameter controls how many recent events to include (default: 50, max: 500). Events are returned newest-first and include a timestamp, event type, and a truncated data preview.

With conversation messages

debug_state({"include_messages": true, "message_limit": 10})

Read the full file on GitHub · 201 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. 2d ago First seen · 201 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A f80cb9aa9dcd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository matteing/opal (58 stars, last pushed 20d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 2,010 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

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