Investigate Root Cause

Overview

A four-phase debugging workflow that forces an engineer to gather evidence and write down a hypothesis before changing any code. The skill exists because the most common debugging failure isn't a missing technique — it's the engineer skipping past the error message, forming a vague mental theory, and patching the symptom. Every phase here produces an artifact you could paste into a code review. If you can't produce the artifact, you haven't done the phase. The skill is for senior ICs and tech leads who already know how to debug; what it adds is the discipline to refuse to fix what you don't yet understand.

When to Use