skill-alisinadevelo-md-files-root-cause-debugging · by Install
$ agentstack add skill-alisinadevelo-md-files-root-cause-debugging ✓ scanned · ✓ verified, works with Claude Code, Cursor, and more.
Security review
✓ PassedNo issues found. Passed automated security review. · v0.1.0 How review works →
- ✓ Prompt-injection patterns
- ✓ Secret / credential exfiltration
- ✓ Dangerous shell & filesystem operations
- ✓ Untrusted network calls
- ✓ Known-malicious package signatures
What it can access
- ✓ Network access No
- ✓ Filesystem access No
- ✓ Shell / process execution No
- ✓ Environment & secrets No
- ✓ Dynamic code execution No
From automated source analysis of v0.1.0. “Used” means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it’s unsafe.
Verified badge
Passed review? Show it. Paste this badge into your README, it links to the public security report.
Links to your public security report.[](https://agentstack.voostack.com/security/report/skill-alisinadevelo-md-files-root-cause-debugging) Reliability & compatibility
Declared compatibility
Compatibility is declared by the source manifest. End-to-end runtime verification is coming, see below.
We're building live execution health for every listing: tool-call success rate, median latency, uptime, and last-checked timestamps, measured, not self-reported. It isn't live yet, so we don't show numbers we can't stand behind.
How agent discovery & health will work →About
Root-Cause Debugging
Find the originating wrong assumption, not the nearest symptom. Fixes applied to symptoms create more bugs; fixes applied to causes are durable.
The method
- Reproduce deterministically. Capture the exact command, inputs, environment, and
full error/trace. If it's flaky, find what flips it — ordering, timing, shared state, uninitialized data. You can't fix what you can't trigger on demand.
- Read the trace from your deepest frame outward. Locate the implicated code and
read it — don't infer behavior from names.
- Form a falsifiable hypothesis. "X is null here because Y returns null when Z."
State what you'd observe if it's true.
- Test it with evidence. A targeted log/print, a narrowed test, an inspected value,
a minimal reproducer. Confirm or kill the hypothesis. Iterate. Never assert a cause you haven't observed.
- Trace to the origin. A wrong value at line 200 was usually set at line 40. Walk
backward until reality first diverged from intent. That's the root cause.
- Fix the cause, then verify. Re-run the failing case and its neighbors to confirm
the fix works and breaks nothing.
Techniques
- Bisect —
git bisectto find the introducing commit; binary-search the input or
the code path to halve the search space each step.
- Rubber-duck — explain the flow aloud; the wrong assumption often surfaces mid-
sentence.
- Minimal reproducer — strip the case to the smallest thing that still fails.
- Differential — what's different between the passing and failing case? Environment,
data, version, order.
Anti-patterns (these hide bugs, they don't fix them)
- Wrapping in try/catch to silence an exception you don't understand.
- Adding
if (x == null) returnwithout asking whyxis null. - Retrying a deterministic failure.
- Changing a test's expected value to match buggy output.
When stuck
State your current hypothesis, the evidence for and against it, and the single experiment that would confirm or refute it next. Don't thrash — each action should eliminate possibilities.
Source & license
This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.
- Author: AlisinaDevelo
- Source: AlisinaDevelo/md-files
- License: MIT
Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.
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Versions
- v0.1.0 Imported from the upstream source.