Occam's Razor

Overview

Occam's Razor states: among competing hypotheses that fit the evidence equally well, prefer the one with the fewest assumptions. This skill operationalizes that principle for debugging: test the simplest hypothesis first, and escalate to complex explanations only when evidence forces it.

The skill has a trigger-shrink gate: if the simplest hypothesis can be tested in one step, just test it — don't run the full enumeration-and-scoring procedure. Reserve the full procedure for situations where multiple hypotheses genuinely compete and the simplest is not obviously testable.

Core Principle: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." — Einstein

When to Use

• Multiple hypotheses could explain a bug and the simplest is NOT obviously testable in one step
• You're about to investigate a complex hypothesis without first testing a simpler one
• Architecture or design decisions where several approaches are viable and differ in complexity
• Root cause analysis where several causes seem plausible

Decision flow: