Superpowers is a software development methodology for coding agents that guides work from clarifying requirements through design, planning, implementation, testing, and review. It is for developers who want agents to follow a structured, test-focused process using composable skills and subagents.
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.
npx skills add obra/superpowers --skill systematic-debugginggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowersWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
- Socket pass
SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to high
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- high Privilege Escalation · line 98 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 99 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00021 | $0.02203 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00881 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00441 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00002 | $0.00220 |
Grade A, and why
systematic-debugging 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.
Copies of this mod
8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 10 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 6 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- systematic-debugging — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 284 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Systematic Debugging
Overview
Core principle: ALWAYS find root cause before attempting fixes. Symptom fixes are failure.
Violating the letter of this process is violating the spirit of debugging.
The Iron Law
NO FIXES WITHOUT ROOT CAUSE INVESTIGATION FIRST
If you haven't completed Phase 1, you cannot propose fixes.
When to Use
Use for ANY technical issue:
- Test failures
- Bugs in production
- Unexpected behavior
- Performance problems
- Build failures
- Integration issues
Use this ESPECIALLY when:
- Under time pressure (emergencies make guessing tempting)
- "Just one quick fix" seems obvious
- You've already tried multiple fixes
- Previous fix didn't work
- You don't fully understand the issue
Don't skip when:
- Issue seems simple (simple bugs have root causes too)
- You're in a hurry (rushing guarantees rework)
- Manager wants it fixed NOW (systematic is faster than thrashing)
The Four Phases
You MUST complete each phase before proceeding to the next.
Phase 1: Root Cause Investigation
BEFORE attempting ANY fix:
-
Read Error Messages Carefully
- Don't skip past errors or warnings
- They often contain the exact solution
- Read stack traces completely
- Note line numbers, file paths, error codes
-
Reproduce Consistently
- Can you trigger it reliably?
- What are the exact steps?
- Does it happen every time?
- If not reproducible → gather more data, don't guess
-
Check Recent Changes
- What changed that could cause this?
- Git diff, recent commits
- New dependencies, config changes
- Environmental differences
-
Gather Evidence in Multi-Component Systems
WHEN system has multiple components (CI → build → signing, API → service → database):
BEFORE proposing fixes, add diagnostic instrumentation:
For EACH component boundary: - Log what data enters component - Log what data exits component - Verify environment/config propagation - Check state at each layer Run once to gather evidence showing WHERE it breaks THEN analyze evidence to identify failing component THEN investigate that specific component
What ships with it
10 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.
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.
- 5d ago Changed 51c6435d98c8
- 1mo ago First seen · 284 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A 808fc5717aa8
systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (299,875 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 2,203 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.
Other skills, from other repositories
coding-protocol
Risk-scaled repo execution and code-evidence protocol. Skip architecture-only work, explanation, contract-preserving prose, and status. Use for contract changes, debugging, code review, implementation plans, and Git mutation; mixed tasks: only those parts.
debugging
You MUST use this when investigating bugs, regressions, failing tests, build or integration failures, flaky behavior, performance anomalies, or other unexpected technical behavior.
inline-plan-dev
You MUST use this when executing an existing implementation plan directly in the current agent session, including resuming interrupted execution. Covers task-by-task implementation, plan drift, and verification. Not for subagent-driven execution.
debugging-and-error-recovery
Enforces a stop-the-line triage protocol across failure classes — test failures, build breaks, runtime errors, and production incidents — using bisection, safe-fallback design, and instrumentation lifecycle management. Use when any unexpected failure appears and the question is "what class of failure is this and…
go-expert
Use when writing or reviewing Go code that starts goroutines, holds a sync.Mutex/RWMutex, or closes channels - to enforce goroutine lifecycle ownership, lock-hygiene, and channel-close-side rules, and to wire up the detection tooling (go test -race, go vet, go.uber.org/goleak) that catches violations tests alone…
security-analysis
Runs a two-pass vulnerability scan on a snippet, file, or diff — a static pattern pass across fixed categories (injection, secrets, auth, crypto, deserialization, path traversal, resource exhaustion), then an LLM-reasoning pass for business-logic and race-condition flaws the patterns can't catch. Use for a dedicated…