debug-assistant

Debug Assistant Skill

Goal

Provide systematic debugging support through structured analysis, hypothesis generation, and methodical testing to identify and fix bugs efficiently.

Activation Triggers

• User reports an error or bug
• User says "debug", "fix this error", "why isn't this working"
• Test failures need investigation
• Unexpected behavior reported

Debugging Framework

1. Gather Information

# Get error context
echo "=== Recent Error Logs ==="
tail -50 *.log 2>/dev/null || echo "No log files"

# Check test output
echo "=== Test Failures ==="
npm test 2>&1 | tail -50 || echo "No test command"

# Check TypeScript errors
echo "=== Type Errors ==="
npm run typecheck 2>&1 | tail -30 || tsc --noEmit 2>&1 | tail -30 || echo "No typecheck"

# Check runtime errors
echo "=== Console Errors ==="
# User needs to provide these

2. Reproduce the Bug

Questions to ask:

1. What is the expected behavior?
2. What is the actual behavior?
3. What are the exact steps to reproduce?
4. When did this start happening?
5. What changed recently?

Reproduction checklist:

# Check recent changes
git log --oneline -10

# Check what files changed
git diff HEAD~5 --name-only

# Check if it reproduces in a fresh state
npm ci && npm run build && npm test

3. Form Hypotheses

Based on the error, generate possible causes:

Symptom	Possible Causes
TypeError: undefined	Missing null check, async timing, wrong import
Network error	API down, wrong URL, CORS, auth expired
Test timeout	Infinite loop, missing async/await, slow DB
Build failure	Type mismatch, missing dependency, syntax error
Runtime crash	Memory leak, stack overflow, unhandled promise

4. Investigate Systematically

For Each Hypothesis:

A. Identify relevant code

# Find files related to the error
grep -rn "errorKeyword" src/ --include="*.ts" | head -20

# Find function definitions
grep -rn "functionName" src/ --include="*.ts" | head -10