Debugging Strategies

Debugging Strategies is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from PramodDutta/qaskills. It costs 28 tokens per session (3,887 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A systematic guide to finding the causes of failing or unreliable tests. It covers reproducing failures, narrowing them to a small case, investigating performance problems, and checking recent code or environment changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate local or continuous-integration test failures, intermittent errors, slow tests, and unclear error messages.
Why use it?
It replaces guesswork with a repeatable way to distinguish a real bug from a flaky test or a changed environment. This helps prevent the same failure from returning.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Which agent this was written for is unclear — built for aider. Also seen: mentions Codex; built for aider.

Good fit Use it to investigate local or continuous-integration test failures, intermittent errors, slow tests, and unclear error messages.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/pramoddutta/qaskills/debugging-strategies
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 PramodDutta/qaskills --skill debugging-strategies
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PramodDutta/qaskills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 Debugging Strategies

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pramoddutta/qaskills/debugging-strategies.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/pramoddutta/qaskills/debugging-strategies)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pramoddutta/qaskills/debugging-strategies"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pramoddutta/qaskills/debugging-strategies.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,887 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 warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 12 findings, up to medium

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 →

  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 64
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 67
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 81
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 82
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 83
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 358
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 359
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 375
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 378
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium Tool Misuse · line 77
    Tool defaults are unsafe or overly permissive (e.g. disabled TLS verification, no authentication, world-writable permissions). Unsafe defaults widen the attack surface.
    Fix: Override unsafe defaults with secure settings (verify=True, auth required, restrictive permissions). Review and harden all tool configurations.
  • medium Output Handling · line 411
    Output size or generation rate is not bounded. Unbounded output enables denial-of-service through resource exhaustion, log flooding, or context-window stuffing.
    Fix: Set explicit limits on output length, generation count, and rate. Use max_tokens and truncation to prevent unbounded output.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 492
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
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 $0.00028 $0.03887
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.01944
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00777
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00389

Measured 4d ago against content hash 7822044ea6c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Debugging Strategies 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.

seed-skills/debugging-strategies/SKILL.md · 596 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 596 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Debugging Strategies Skill

You are an expert QA engineer specializing in debugging test failures and systematic troubleshooting. When the user asks you to debug failing tests or investigate issues, follow these detailed instructions.

Core Principles

  1. Reproduce first -- If you can't reproduce it, you can't fix it.
  2. Isolate the problem -- Narrow down to the smallest failing case.
  3. Understand, don't guess -- Know why it fails before attempting fixes.
  4. Fix the root cause -- Don't treat symptoms, fix the underlying issue.
  5. Prevent recurrence -- Add safeguards to prevent the same failure.

Systematic Debugging Process

1. Gather Information

Before touching any code:

STEP 1: Collect Facts
- When did it start failing? (new code? environment change?)
- Does it fail consistently or intermittently?
- Does it fail locally or only in CI?
- Does it fail in all browsers or specific ones?
- What's the error message? Full stack trace?
- What were the recent changes to the codebase?

Checklist:

  • Read the full error message and stack trace
  • Check test logs and screenshots
  • Review recent commits and PRs
  • Check CI/CD pipeline changes
  • Verify environment variables and config
  • Check if other tests are also failing

2. Reproduce Locally

# Run the specific failing test
npm test -- path/to/failing.test.js

# Run with verbose output
npm test -- --verbose path/to/failing.test.js

# Run in debug mode
node --inspect-brk node_modules/.bin/jest path/to/failing.test.js

# Playwright debug mode
npx playwright test --debug failing.spec.ts

# Run with trace
npx playwright test --trace on failing.spec.ts

Common reproduction scenarios:

// Run test multiple times to check for flakiness
for i in {1..10}; do npm test failing.test.js || break; done

// Run in different environments
NODE_ENV=development npm test
NODE_ENV=production npm test

// Run with different browsers
npx playwright test --project=chromium
npx playwright test --project=firefox
npx playwright test --project=webkit

Read the full file on GitHub · 596 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. 4d ago First seen · 596 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 7822044ea6c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Debugging Strategies is a skill published in the GitHub repository PramodDutta/qaskills (218 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 3,887 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 2026-09-03.

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