What is superpowers-systematic-debugging?

A debugging process that investigates the underlying cause of a problem before suggesting a fix. It covers bugs, failed tests, build failures, performance issues, and other unexpected behavior.

Use it to examine error messages, reproduce failures, trace causes, and verify that a proposed fix addresses the original issue.

It helps prevent repeated trial-and-error fixes that only hide symptoms or introduce new problems.

superpowers-systematic-debugging — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by

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 regen-coordination/org-os-template --skill superpowers-systematic-debugging

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/regen-coordination/org-os-template

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/superpowers-systematic-debugging/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/superpowers-systematic-debugging)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/superpowers-systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/superpowers-systematic-debugging"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/regen-coordination/org-os-template/superpowers-systematic-debugging.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,571 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.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00035	$0.01571
Opus 5	$0.00017	$0.00785
Sonnet 5	$0.00007	$0.00314
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00157

Measured 9d ago against content hash 6487408412a8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

superpowers-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 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.

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.

skills/superpowers-systematic-debugging/SKILL.md · 221 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 221 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Systematic Debugging

Overview

Random fixes waste time and create new bugs. Quick patches mask underlying issues.

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

Read the full file on GitHub · 221 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.

9d ago First seen · 221 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 6487408412a8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

superpowers-systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository regen-coordination/org-os-template (5 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 1,571 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

Debugging engineering

ce-debug

Diagnosis loop for bugs and failing behavior. Use when asked to debug or fix failing or slow behavior.

EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin · 23 tokens

ce-sweep

Sweep configured feedback sources (Slack, GitHub Issues; email experimental) for new items: acknowledge at source, analyze recordings, verify fixes merged to main, and emit an lfg-ready plan. First run sets up sources; supports mode:non-interactive for scheduled runs.

EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin · 62 tokens

superpowers-systematic-debugging