Systematic Debugging

Overview

Random fixes waste time and create new bugs. Quick patches mask underlying issues.

Core principle: ALWAYS find root cause before attempting fixes. Symptom fixes are failure.

This skill is advisory in v10. It deepens investigation quality. It does not authorize local-only patches, guesswork, or "fix the line that crashed" thinking.

Reference Files

Read only the references needed for the current investigation:

• references/root-cause-playbooks.md for build/type failures, flaky tests, runtime crashes, browser errors, git bisect, and boundary tracing
• references/investigation-hygiene.md for context discipline, evidence logging, hypothesis tracking, restart protocol, and architectural escalation

The Iron Law