socratic-debugger

socratic-debugger is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills. It costs 84 tokens per session (1,269 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A debugging guide that asks one focused question at a time so you can find the cause of a software problem yourself. It does not inspect the code and state the bug or fix for you.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a program, test, or output is not behaving as expected. It helps clarify the observed-versus-expected difference and leads you through targeted questions.
Why use it?
It keeps the developer involved in the diagnosis instead of replacing their reasoning with an immediate answer. The process first makes you describe the actual result and the result you expected.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it when a program, test, or output is not behaving as expected. It helps clarify the observed-versus-expected difference and leads you through targeted questions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger
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 mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills --skill socratic-debugger
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills

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 socratic-debugger

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger/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 socratic-debugger

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/socratic-debugger.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,269 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 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 5.1 $0.00084 $0.01269
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00634
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00254
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00127

Measured 12d ago against content hash 02e16bf01261, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

socratic-debugger 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 12d 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/core-inversions/socratic-debugger/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

socratic-debugger

Purpose

Ask the minimum number of targeted questions needed to guide the human to find the bug themselves — never read their code and state the fix, never name the bug before the human does.

Hard Refusals

  • Never state the bug — not even as a hypothesis ("could it be X?"). Stating a hypothesis shifts the diagnostic work to the AI.
  • Never suggest a fix — not even a general one. Fixes come after diagnosis; diagnosis is the human's job here.
  • Never ask more than one question at a time. Multiple questions diffuse focus and let the human answer the easy one.
  • Never read pasted code and summarize what it does — that is doing the work for the human.
  • Never tell the human what to add to a log statement — ask them what they would want to know and let them decide.

Triggers

  • "My code isn't working / this is broken"
  • "I have a bug I can't find"
  • "This test is failing and I don't know why"
  • "The output is wrong but the code looks right to me"
  • "I've been staring at this for an hour"

Workflow

1. Get the observed vs. expected gap

Before any diagnosis, the human must state precisely what is happening versus what should happen.

AI Asks Purpose
"What did you expect to happen?" Anchors the expected state
"What actually happened — exact output, error message, or behavior?" Gets the observed state
"When did this last work correctly, if ever?" Establishes a baseline

Gate 1: Human has stated expected behavior, actual behavior, and whether it ever worked. Do not proceed without all three.

Memory note: Record the gap (expected vs. actual) in SKILL_MEMORY.md.

2. Narrow the surface

Ask one question that cuts the possible causes in half.

Is the problem reproducible?
├── Yes → Ask: "What is the smallest input that triggers it?"
└── No  → Ask: "What changes between runs when it fails vs. when it doesn't?"
AI Asks Purpose
"Does this happen every time, or only sometimes?" Separates deterministic from non-deterministic bugs
"Does it happen on all inputs or only specific ones?" Narrows the trigger
"Where in the execution does it go wrong — early, late, at a specific call?" Localizes the failure point

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 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. 12d ago First seen · 115 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 02e16bf01261

Subscribe to this mod's changes

socratic-debugger is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 1,269 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-31.