Wicked Garden Engineering Debugging

Debugging Skill

Systematic debugging, root cause analysis, and error investigation.

Debugging Approach

1. Understand the Problem

• What is expected vs actual behavior?
• When did it start? Can it be reproduced?
• What changed recently?

2. Gather Evidence

• Read logs and stack traces
• Review recent changes
• Identify patterns

3. Form Hypothesis

• What is the most likely cause?
• What evidence supports this?

4. Test Hypothesis

• Design targeted test
• Observe results
• Refine if needed

5. Implement Fix

• Develop minimal fix
• Verify resolution
• Add regression tests

6. Document

• Root cause and fix
• Add monitoring/alerting

Issue Categories

• Logic Errors: Incorrect conditions, off-by-one, wrong operators
• State Errors: Race conditions, stale closures, shared mutable state
• Integration Errors: API mismatch, auth issues, timeouts
• Performance: N+1 queries, missing indexes, memory leaks
• Environment: Config differences, missing vars, permissions

Systematic Process

Follow the six-step debugging process with:

• Checklists for investigation and evidence gathering
• Severity levels (CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW)
• Output templates for documentation
• Tools by environment (browser, Node.js, database)

See [refs/process.md](refs/process.md) for detailed process, checklists, and severity guidelines.

Common Patterns

Debugging techniques and solutions for:

• Null/undefined issues with optional chaining
• Async timing and race conditions
• Scope and closure problems
• Binary search debugging with git bisect
• Performance profiling
• Database query analysis

See [refs/patterns.md](refs/patterns.md) for code examples and debugging techniques.

External Integration Discovery

Debugging can leverage available integrations by capability:

| Capability | Discovery Patterns | Provides | |------------|-------------------|----------| | Error tracking | sentry, rollbar, datadog | Recent errors, stack traces, user context | | Observability | newrelic, dynatrace, telemetry | APM data, traces, metrics | | Logging | splunk, elastic, cloudwatch | Log aggregation, search |

Discover available integrations via capability detection. Fall back to local log analysis via wicked-garden:search when none available.

Notes

• Start with the simplest explanation
• Use scientific method: hypothesis, test, refine
• Document your findings for future reference
• Add tests to prevent regression

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: mikeparcewski
• Source: mikeparcewski/wicked-garden
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://wg.wickedagile.com/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.