systematic-debugging-codex

systematic-debugging-codex is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex. It costs 37 tokens per session (1,239 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A four-phase debugging workflow that uses Codex for root-cause investigation before a fix is applied. It requires the investigation to happen before implementation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Investigating errors with messages, stack traces, reproduction steps, logs, and recent changes, then applying a supported fix.
Why use it?
It reduces symptom-based fixes by making the agent collect evidence and identify the underlying cause first.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the superpowers-cc-to-codex plugin — 15 skills, 2 commands 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/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex/systematic-debugging-codex
Any agent
npx skills add mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex --skill systematic-debugging-codex
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install superpowers-cc-to-codex, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 15 skills, 2 commands.

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-codex

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex/systematic-debugging-codex.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex/systematic-debugging-codex)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex/systematic-debugging-codex"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex/systematic-debugging-codex.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,239 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 $0.00037 $0.01239
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00620
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00248
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00124

Measured 4d ago against content hash bee4e39e3502, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

systematic-debugging-codex 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 4d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (condition-based-waiting-example.ts, find-polluter.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/systematic-debugging-codex/SKILL.md · 118 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 118 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Systematic Debugging

Keep Claude in the main thread for user interaction and fix decisions. Call codex_debug for bounded root cause investigation (Phases 1-3). Call codex_implement / codex_resume for applying fixes (Phase 4).

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

The Iron Law

NO FIXES WITHOUT ROOT CAUSE INVESTIGATION FIRST

Checklist

You MUST complete these steps in order:

Phases 1-3: Investigation (Codex)

  1. Gather context — collect error messages, stack traces, reproduction steps, recent changes from the user or logs. This is Claude's job.

  2. Dispatch investigator — call the codex_debug MCP tool. Pass a full prompt body with the reproduction steps, current evidence, recent changes, and the exact question Codex should answer.

{
  "tool": "codex_debug",
  "arguments": {
    "prompt": "Investigate why Codex-backed agents are still doing repository work locally instead of forwarding through the adapter. Include the current failure mode, relevant files, and the strongest root-cause hypothesis supported by code evidence.",
    "workspaceRoot": "/absolute/path/to/your/repo"
  }
}
  1. Handle the response:

    • Success (result populated): the investigation conforms to schemas/debug-investigation.schema.json (root_cause, evidence, working_examples, hypothesis, suggested_fix). Proceed to validate (Step 4).
    • Weak or missing evidence: re-dispatch codex_debug with a sharper prompt naming the missing pieces (or surface a blocker to the user when needed).
    • Error (no result): inspect stderrTail and the resume hint in the error message; resume with codex_resume(taskId="…") once the cause is resolved.

Read the full file on GitHub · 118 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 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. 4d ago First seen · 118 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A bee4e39e3502

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging-codex is a skill published in the GitHub repository mzored/superpowers-cc-to-codex (7 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,239 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 2026-08-31.