agent-introspection-debugging

Agent Introspection Debugging

Use this skill when an agent run is failing repeatedly, consuming tokens without progress, looping on the same tools, or drifting away from the intended task.

This is a workflow skill, not a hidden runtime. It teaches the agent to debug itself systematically before escalating to a human.

When to Activate

• Maximum tool call / loop-limit failures
• Repeated retries with no forward progress
• Context growth or prompt drift that starts degrading output quality
• File-system or environment state mismatch between expectation and reality
• Tool failures that are likely recoverable with diagnosis and a smaller corrective action

Scope Boundaries

Activate this skill for:

• capturing failure state before retrying blindly
• diagnosing common agent-specific failure patterns
• applying contained recovery actions
• producing a structured human-readable debug report

Do not use this skill as the primary source for:

• feature verification after code changes; use verification-loop
• framework-specific debugging when a narrower ECC skill already exists
• runtime promises the current harness cannot enforce automatically

Four-Phase Loop

Phase 1: Failure Capture

Before trying to recover, record the failure precisely.

Capture:

• error type, message, and stack trace when available
• last meaningful tool call sequence
• what the agent was trying to do
• current context pressure: repeated prompts, oversized pasted logs, duplicated plans, or runaway notes
• current environment assumptions: cwd, branch, relevant service state, expected files

Minimum capture template:

## Failure Capture
- Session / task:
- Goal in progress:
- Error:
- Last successful step:
- Last failed tool / command:
- Repeated pattern seen:
- Environment assumptions to verify:

Phase 2: Root-Cause Diagnosis

Match the failure to a known pattern before changing anything.

Pattern	Likely Cause	Check
Maximum tool calls / repeated same command	loop or no-exit observer path	inspect the last N tool calls for repetition
Context overflow / degraded reasoning	unbounded notes, repeated plans, oversized logs	inspect recent context for duplication and low-signal bulk
ECONNREFUSED / timeout	service unavailable or wrong port	verify service health, URL, and port assumptions
429 / quota exhaustion	retry storm or missing backoff	count repeated calls and inspect retry spacing
file missing after write / stale diff	race, wrong cwd, or branch drift	re-check path, cwd, git status, and actual file existence
tests still failing after “fix”	wrong hypothesis	isolate the exact failing test and re-derive the bug