nw-root-why

nw-root-why is a skill for Claude Code from nWave-ai/nWave. It costs 10 tokens per session (636 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured debugging method based on asking “why” repeatedly to find the underlying causes of a problem. It examines multiple possible causes and requires evidence before accepting an explanation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate failures, review what went well or badly, identify root causes, and check that proposed fixes cover them.
Why use it?
It prevents teams from stopping at the first visible symptom and applying a fix that does not address the real problem.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to investigate failures, review what went well or badly, identify root causes, and check that proposed fixes cover them.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why
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 nWave-ai/nWave --skill nw-root-why
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nWave-ai/nWave

Made for: Claude Code.

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 nw-root-why

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why/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 nw-root-why

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-root-why.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 10 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 636 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00010 $0.00636
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00318
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00127
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00064

Measured 3d ago against content hash f2f41f4ecfe7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nw-root-why 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 3d 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.

nWave/skills/nw-root-why/SKILL.md · 66 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

NW-ROOT-WHY: Toyota 5 Whys Root Cause Analysis

Wave: CROSS_WAVE Agent: Rex (nw-troubleshooter)

Overview

Systematic root cause analysis using Toyota's 5 Whys with multi-causal investigation and evidence-based validation. Investigates multiple cause branches at each level|validates solutions against all identified root causes.

Agent Invocation

@nw-troubleshooter

Execute *investigate-root-cause for {problem-statement}.

Configuration:

  • investigation_depth: 5
  • multi_causal: true
  • evidence_required: true

Usage: DELIVER Wave Retrospective (Phase 3.5)

When invoked as part of /nw-deliver Phase 3.5, execute in order:

  1. Gather Inputs — Read the evolution document, mutation results, git log, roadmap.json, and execution-log.json. Gate: all available inputs loaded.
  2. Analyze What Worked Well — Identify practices that succeeded and document why — preserve these. Gate: at least one practice documented with rationale.
  3. Analyze What Improved — Identify what worked better than before and why — record as reinforcements. Gate: delta from prior execution captured.
  4. Analyze What Worked Badly — Apply 5 Whys root cause analysis to failures; produce actionable fix per root cause. Gate: each failure has a root cause and fix.
  5. Analyze What Regressed — Apply 5 Whys to anything worse than before; produce prevention action. Gate: each regression has a root cause and prevention action.
  6. Tag Meta-Improvements — Mark any items requiring nWave framework changes as meta-improvements. Gate: all framework-level issues flagged.
  7. Append Retrospective — Write retrospective section to evolution document. If clean execution (no skips, no failures, no tooling issues), generate brief summary only. Gate: evolution document updated.

Success Criteria

  • All 5 WHY levels investigated with evidence
  • Multi-causal branches explored at each level
  • Root causes identified and validated
  • Solutions address all identified root causes
  • Backward chain validation performed

Read the full file on GitHub · 66 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. 3d ago First seen · 66 lines · 10 tokens per session scan A f2f41f4ecfe7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nw-root-why is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (610 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 10 tokens to every session and 636 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-06.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

rubber-duck

Adversarial "rubber duck" review that turns explaining-out-loud into a hallucination check. The main session is the PRESENTER (it did the work — a design doc, investigation, or analysis — and holds the real reasoning) and reconstructs the topic to a LISTENER — a spawned subagent pinned to a DIFFERENT-vendor model that…

kirodotdev/KiroCrew · 161 tokens

ios-simulator

Verify and debug native, React Native, Expo, or Flutter apps on an iOS Simulator with agent-device. Use when an agent needs to launch an app, inspect its live UI, tap, type, scroll, validate a code change, collect failure evidence, or reproduce a workflow on an iPhone or iPad Simulator.

callstack/agent-device · 69 tokens

cvm-ai-doctor

A health-diagnosis workflow for servers, computers, virtual machines, and containers on Linux, macOS, or Windows.

TencentCloud/Octop · 60 tokens

quality-hooks

Language-specific auto-lint/format/typecheck pipeline. Supports Python (ruff+pyright), TypeScript (prettier+eslint+tsc), Go (gofmt+golangci-lint). Auto-fix and convergence loops.

a5c-ai/babysitter · 53 tokens

ai-discover

Parallel discovery of performance hotspots (perf track) and failure surfaces (bug track) for the auto-improvement loop. Fans out one subagent per hot-path area or failure surface; each returns ONE concrete, behavior-preserving fix candidate (perf) or a reproducing test plus fix (bug). Discovery only — no code changes…

kirodotdev/KiroCrew · 75 tokens

debug

Debug issues in the MCP Gateway Registry using first-principles thinking. Invoke when something is broken, timing out, returning errors, or behaving unexpectedly. Forces structured root-cause analysis before any code change is proposed.

agentic-community/mcp-gateway-registry · 45 tokens