troubleshoot

troubleshoot is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat. It costs 55 tokens per session (4,730 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of troubleshoot, MIT.

A troubleshooting skill that examines Copilot Chat's JSONL debug logs to explain unexpected agent behavior. JSONL is a text format storing one JSON record per line.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate slow requests, blocked or failed tool calls, missing instructions, and why the agent did or did not use a particular capability.
Why use it?
It replaces guesswork with evidence from logs when tools, skills, subagents, or instructions behave unexpectedly.

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/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat/troubleshoot
Any agent
npx skills add microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat --skill troubleshoot
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 troubleshoot

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat/troubleshoot.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat/troubleshoot)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat/troubleshoot"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat/troubleshoot.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 55 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,730 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 98% 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 $0.00055 $0.04730
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.02365
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00946
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00473

Measured 5d ago against content hash 4c35ee060eb4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

troubleshoot 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.

Origin

This is a copy

98% identical to troubleshoot — 2 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.

assets/prompts/skills/troubleshoot/SKILL.md · 272 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 272 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Troubleshoot

Purpose

This skill investigates and explains unexpected chat agent behavior using direct log files.

Use this skill for questions like:

  • Why did this request take so long?
  • Why was a tool or subagent called?
  • Why did instruction/skill/agent files not load?
  • Why was a tool call blocked or failed?
  • Why did the model not follow expectations?

Base conclusions on evidence from logs. Do not guess.

Data Source

  • Target session log directory/directories for analysis: {{VSCODE_TARGET_SESSION_LOG}}

Use direct debug log files written by Copilot Chat:

debug-logs/<sessionId>/
  main.jsonl                              — always start here; primary conversation log
  models.json                             — (optional) snapshot of available models at session start
  system_prompt_0.json                    — (optional) full system prompt sent to the model (untruncated)
  system_prompt_1.json                    — (optional) written when the model changes mid-session
  tools_0.json                            — (optional) tool definitions sent to the model
  tools_1.json                            — (optional) written when the model changes mid-session
  runSubagent-<agentName>-<uuid>.jsonl    — (optional) subagent's tool calls & LLM requests
  searchSubagent-<uuid>.jsonl             — (optional) search subagent work
  title-<uuid>.jsonl                      — (optional, UI-only) title generation
  categorization-<uuid>.jsonl             — (optional, UI-only) prompt categorization
  summarize-<uuid>.jsonl                  — (optional, UI-only) conversation summarization

Always read main.jsonl first — it has the full conversation flow. Child files only appear when those operations occurred. main.jsonl contains child_session_ref entries that link to each child file by name. Title, categorization, and summarize files are UI housekeeping and rarely relevant to troubleshooting. When investigating model availability or selection issues, read models.json — it contains the full list of models (with capabilities, billing, and limits) that were available when the session started.

Read the full file on GitHub · 272 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 · 272 lines · 55 tokens per session scan A 4c35ee060eb4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

troubleshoot is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat (9,971 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 55 tokens to every session and 4,730 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 98% identical to troubleshoot, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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