vdebug

vdebug is a skill for Claude Code from phamcuong21478/rtl-skills. It costs 27 tokens per session (4,241 once invoked), scanned C, original, Apache-2.0.

A hardware debugging tool that follows failing signals through a Verilog module hierarchy and identifies the likely root cause. It diagnoses problems but does not suggest or apply fixes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for a deep investigation of one issue or for processing all open issues for an IP, with a written debug report for each issue.
Why use it?
It turns a reported RTL failure into a file-level cause instead of leaving the developer to trace every connection manually. Batch mode can group related failures around one shared cause.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: effort in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Good fit Use it for a deep investigation of one issue or for processing all open issues for an IP, with a written debug report for each issue.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug
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 phamcuong21478/rtl-skills --skill vdebug
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills

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 vdebug

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug/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 vdebug

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/phamcuong21478/rtl-skills/vdebug.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 27 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,241 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00027 $0.04241
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.02121
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00848
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00424

Measured 9d ago against content hash 49c30c2a67d3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

vdebug scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 9d 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.

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

rm -rf sim/tb_<name>
skills/vdebug/SKILL.md · 335 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 335 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Verilog Debugger

Overview

This guide defines the workflow for diagnosing RTL failures captured in issue reports. Starting from the failure context, the skill traces signal paths statically through the module hierarchy, observes intermediate nodes with a temporary testbench probe when needed, and classifies the root cause with file-level precision.

This skill diagnoses root cause only. It does not propose or apply any code change.

Operating Modes

Mode Input Use case
Single IP name + issue number (e.g. foo issue_003) Deep-dive on one specific issue
Batch IP name only (e.g. foo) Process all open issues; group by root cause

In batch mode, cluster before tracing to avoid re-tracing a shared root once per failure:

  1. Triage every issue file first (cheap — just the [ERROR] register address each maps to) and group issues whose failing output is the same or adjacent.
  2. Read the IP-level context (doc/<ip_name>.md, rtl/<ip_name>_top.v) once and reuse it for all clusters.
  3. Trace each cluster's shared signal path once (Step 3), then write a report for every issue in the cluster from that single trace.

Process clusters from the lowest issue number upward.

Outputs

  • ./issue/<ip_name>/debug_NNN_<tcname>.md — one per issue analyzed (NNN matches the issue number)
  • ./issue/<ip_name>/debug_summary.md — batch mode only; root cause grouping across all analyzed issues

Before You Start — Re-run Safety & Scope

vdebug is a read-and-diagnose skill with one deliberate, temporary write: the optional probe in Step 4. Two scope rules make re-runs safe:

  • Never write to rtl/ or lib/. Diagnosis reads synthesizable source but never edits it. All probing happens in a disposable testbench include (tb/<ip_name>/vdebug_probe.svh, Step 4) that reaches internal nodes by hierarchical reference (u_dut.<inst>.<sig>) — the DUT is never instrumented.
  • Clean stale probes first. A prior run may have aborted between Step 4A and 4C. Before starting, confirm no probe artifact survives: grep -rn "vdebug probe" tb/<ip_name>/ returns nothing, tb/<ip_name>/vdebug_probe.svh does not exist, and no tb_*.sv still `includes it. Remove any leftover before diagnosing.

Read the full file on GitHub · 335 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. 9d ago First seen · 335 lines · 27 tokens per session scan C 49c30c2a67d3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vdebug is a skill published in the GitHub repository phamcuong21478/rtl-skills (11 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 4,241 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (recursive force delete). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.