systematic-debugging

A structured debugging method for persistent bugs and difficult issues after several attempted fixes have failed. Fagan Inspection is a formal, step-by-step review process for finding defects.

In plain words
What is it for?
Investigating complex bugs through an initial overview, systematic inspection, and later root-cause analysis.
Why use it?
It forces the problem, expected result, observed result, symptoms, and previous attempts to be documented before more fixes are tried.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/sammcj/agentic-coding/systematic-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add sammcj/agentic-coding --skill systematic-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sammcj/agentic-coding

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,055 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00072 $0.01055
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00528
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00211
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00105

Measured yesterday against content hash 68aff372c459, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 yesterday.

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/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Systematic Debugging with Fagan Inspection

This skill applies a modified Fagan Inspection methodology for systematic problem resolution when facing complex problems or stubborn bugs that have resisted multiple fix attempts.

Process Overview

Create tasks for each of the four phases, then work them to completion, marking each done before starting the next.

Follow these four phases sequentially. Do not skip phases or attempt fixes before completing the inspection.

Phase 1: Initial Overview

Establish a clear understanding of the problem before analysis:

  • Explain the problem in plain language without technical jargon
  • State expected behaviour - what should happen
  • State actual behaviour - what is happening instead
  • Document symptoms - error messages, logs, observable failures
  • Context - when does it occur, how often, under what conditions
  • Prior fix attempts - list each attempt, what it changed, and why it failed; treat these as eliminated hypotheses that Phase 3 must account for

Output: A clear problem statement that anyone could understand.

Phase 2: Systematic Inspection

Perform a line-by-line walkthrough as the "Reader" role in Fagan Inspection. Identify defects without attempting to fix them yet - this is pure inspection.

Check against these defect categories:

  1. Logic Errors
  2. Boundary Conditions
  3. Error Handling
  4. Data Flow Issues
  5. Integration Points

Think aloud during this phase. For each section of code:

  • State what the code is intended to do
  • Identify any discrepancies between intent and implementation
  • Flag assumptions or unclear aspects
  • Use ultrathink to think deeper on complex sections

Output: A categorised list of identified defects with line numbers and specific descriptions.

Phase 3: Root Cause Analysis

After identifying issues, trace back to find the fundamental cause - not just symptoms.

Five Whys Technique:

  • Ask "why" repeatedly (at least 3-5 times) to get to the underlying issue
  • State each "why" explicitly in your analysis
  • Example:
    • Why did the API call fail? → Because the request was malformed
    • Why was it malformed? → Because the data wasn't serialised correctly
    • Why wasn't it serialised? → Because the serialiser expected a different type
    • Why did it expect a different type? → Because the schema was updated but code wasn't
    • Root cause: Schema versioning mismatch between services

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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. yesterday First seen · 114 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 68aff372c459

Subscribe to this mod's changes

systematic-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository sammcj/agentic-coding (158 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 1,055 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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