runtime-debug

A debugging and verification workflow for Next.js runtime bundles and module-resolution problems, including failures in continuous integration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate bundle-size or module-inclusion regressions, inspect route trace files, reproduce CI settings, and add tests for forbidden runtime dependencies.
Why use it?
It gives a repeatable way to reproduce environment-specific failures and detect when server builds include modules they should not include.

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/vercel/next.js/runtime-debug
Any agent
npx skills add vercel/next.js --skill runtime-debug
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vercel/next.js

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 82 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 563 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 $0.00082 $0.00563
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00282
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00113
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00056

Measured yesterday against content hash 26b9786e0fa4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

runtime-debug 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.

.agents/skills/runtime-debug/SKILL.md · 57 lines

What it actually says

Runtime Debug

Use this skill when reproducing runtime-bundle, module-resolution, or user-bundle inclusion regressions.

Local Repro Discipline

  • Mirror CI env vars when reproducing CI failures.
  • Key variables: IS_WEBPACK_TEST=1 forces webpack (turbopack is default), NEXT_SKIP_ISOLATE=1 skips packing next.js.
  • For module-resolution validation, always rerun without NEXT_SKIP_ISOLATE=1.

Stack Trace Visibility

Set __NEXT_SHOW_IGNORE_LISTED=true to disable the ignore-list filtering in dev server error output. By default, Next.js collapses internal frames to at ignore-listed frames, which hides useful context when debugging framework internals. Defined in packages/next/src/server/patch-error-inspect.ts.

User-Bundle Regression Guardrail

When user next build starts bundling internal Node-only helpers unexpectedly:

  1. Inspect route trace artifacts (.next/server/.../page.js.nft.json).
  2. Inspect traced server chunks for forbidden internals (e.g. next/dist/server/stream-utils/node-stream-helpers.js, node:stream/promises).
  3. Add a test-start-webpack assertion that reads the route trace and traced server chunks, and fails on forbidden internals. This validates user-project bundling (not publish-time runtime bundling).

Bundle Tracing / Inclusion Proof

To prove what user bundling includes, emit webpack stats from the app's next.config.js:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  webpack(config) {
    config.profile = true
    return config
  },
}

Then use stats.toJson({ modules: true, chunks: true, reasons: true }) and diff webpack-stats-server.json between modes. This gives concrete inclusion reasons (e.g. which module required node:stream/promises) and is more reliable than analyzer HTML alone.

  • $flags - flag wiring (config/schema/define-env/runtime env)
  • $dce-edge - DCE-safe require patterns and edge constraints
  • $react-vendoring - entry-base boundaries and vendored React
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 · 57 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A 26b9786e0fa4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

runtime-debug is a skill published in the GitHub repository vercel/next.js (142,020 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 563 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.