Systematic Debugging

Overview

This skill provides a canonical, multi-phase debugging workflow designed to move from symptom to root cause, preventing the common pitfall of 'symptom fixing' which often introduces new bugs. It emphasizes evidence over intuition and forces a rigorous verification process before any code changes are applied.

Key Phases

1. Root Cause Investigation: Drills upward through seven diagnostic layers (from L1 Symptom to L7 Spec Gap) to ensure the deepest possible cause is found.
2. Pattern Analysis: Uses working examples and reference comparison to identify discrepancies.
3. Hypothesis and Testing: Iterative cycles of single-hypothesis testing with minimal instrumentation.
4. Implementation: Focuses on the 'smallest sufficient stable repair' at the canonical owner, including a dual-track closure (Repair and Retirement tracks).

Advanced Gates

• Patch-Shape Triage: Prevents superficial fixes (like adding guards or fallbacks) without verifying the canonical owner.
• Pre-Claim Gate: A rigorous check involving Causal Closure, Falsifier Checking, and Adversarial Self-Refutation before claiming a root cause.
• Quality Gate: A set of hard signals (H-class) and depth requirements (D-class) to verify the fix is complete and didn't introduce complexity.