principle-fix-root-causes

principle-fix-root-causes is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from painhardcore/pstack. It costs 42 tokens per session (284 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of principle-fix-root-causes, MIT.

A debugging method that traces each symptom back to its underlying cause, starting with reproduction and repeated questions about why it happened.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when reproducing bugs, examining repeated failure patterns, adding diagnostic logging, or investigating crashes and restart-related problems.
Why use it?
It discourages temporary guards and workarounds that hide failures while leaving the real bug in place. It also calls attention to stale saved state when problems appear after a restart.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the pstack plugin — 41 skills, 2 agents 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/painhardcore/pstack/principle-fix-root-causes
Any agent
npx skills add painhardcore/pstack --skill principle-fix-root-causes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/painhardcore/pstack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 41 skills, 2 agents.

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 principle-fix-root-causes

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/painhardcore/pstack/principle-fix-root-causes.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/painhardcore/pstack/principle-fix-root-causes)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/painhardcore/pstack/principle-fix-root-causes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/painhardcore/pstack/principle-fix-root-causes.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 284 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 92% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00042 $0.00284
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00142
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00057
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00028

Measured 4d ago against content hash 878ce35bd190, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-fix-root-causes 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.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

92% identical to principle-fix-root-causes — 3 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.opencode/skills/principle-fix-root-causes/SKILL.md · 23 lines

What it actually says

Fix Root Causes

When debugging, do not paper over symptoms. Trace every problem to its root cause and fix it there.

Why: Symptom fixes accumulate. Each workaround makes the system harder to reason about without fixing the bug. Root-cause fixes are slower upfront but reduce total debugging time.

Pattern:

  • Reproduce first (if you can't reproduce it, you can't verify your fix)
  • Ask "why" until you hit the root cause
  • Resist the urge to add guards (adding a nil check to silence a crash is a symptom fix)
  • If a workaround needs a paragraph-long comment to justify it, the code is wrong (fix the code, not the comment)
  • Check for the pattern, not just the instance (grep for the same pattern, fix all instances)
  • When stuck, instrument. Don't guess (add logging, read the actual error)

Restart bugs: suspect state before code

Code doesn't change between runs. State does. When something "fails after restart," suspect stale persistent state first: config files, caches, lock files, serialized state. If clearing a state file restores behavior, prioritize state validation as the fix.

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 · 23 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 878ce35bd190

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-fix-root-causes is a skill published in the GitHub repository painhardcore/pstack (1 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 284 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 92% identical to principle-fix-root-causes, differing in 3 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

codex-setup

Initialize sd0x-dev-flow infrastructure for Codex CLI and other non-Claude agents. Generates AGENTS.md, installs the commit-msg hook, copies runner scripts. The pre-push gate is opt-in via --with-push-gate. Use when setting up a new project or after updating skills.

sd0xdev/sd0x-harness · 65 tokens

iflytek-contract-intelligence-review

Use when user asks to review contracts, detect contract risks, or perform compliance checks. 合同智能审核 - 对合同扫描件、图片合同、双语合同进行完整审核。 覆盖 OCR 识别、条款分析、风险检测、合规校对、翻译摘要全流程。 适用于法务审核、采购合同审查、供应链合规检查等场景。 关键词:合同审核、风险检测、条款分析、合规校对、contract review、risk detection。.

iflytek/iFly-Skills · 116 tokens

debug

Interactive debugging workflow with hypothesis-driven probe loop. Use when: unknown bugs, script errors, silent failures, troubleshooting. Not for: known bugs (use bug-fix), GitHub issue analysis (use issue-analyze), code understanding (use code-explore). Output: debug report with probe journal + root cause + fix.

sd0xdev/sd0x-harness · 67 tokens

feature-dev

Feature development workflow. Use when: implementing features, writing code, running dev loop. Not for: understanding code (use code-explore), reviewing code (use codex-code-review). Output: implemented feature + tests + review gate.

sd0xdev/sd0x-harness · 50 tokens

invest

First-time fork users: run the invest-setup skill first to initialize. The main flow lives in this skill (the AI agent uses the CLI/MCP to view the portfolio / run the committee / replay decision history). The Web GUI has been retired (2026-07) — every capability is exposed via CLI subcommands / MCP tools. The backend…

longsizhuo/openInvest · 261 tokens

invest-backup

Back up / restore openInvest's local state — memory/ (holdings, strategy, user profile, committee records, dream logs) + db/ (trade ledger, job run history, market-data cache) + .env (SMTP/API credentials) + userprofile.json. All of this data is .gitignore'd with no historical versions in git, so a single accidental…

longsizhuo/openInvest · 202 tokens