How does this skill help with async errors?

It provides specific patterns for capturing and logging stack traces within async boundaries, ensuring context is preserved even when execution jumps across the event loop.

What is 'defense-in-depth' in the context of debugging?

It involves adding validation guards and sanity checks at multiple layers—entry points, intermediaries, and environment levels—to ensure a bug cannot recur even if one layer of protection fails.

Can this skill help find which test is breaking my suite?

Yes, it includes a bisection methodology to identify 'polluting tests'—tests that pass themselves but leave the system in a bad state that causes subsequent tests to fail.

When should I use root cause tracing instead of a standard patch?

You should use it whenever a bug surfaces deep in a stack trace or when the behavior is inconsistent, as these often indicate the problem started much earlier in the execution flow.

Root Cause Debugging Playbook

Name: Root Cause Debugging Playbook
Author: tjboudreaux

bytjboudreaux

•

Security & Testing

Systematic debugging playbook for tracing failures backward through the call chain to identify and fix bugs at their origin.

The Root Cause Debugging Playbook is a specialized Claude Code skill designed to help developers move beyond surface-level patches by tracing bugs to their absolute source. It provides a structured workflow for analyzing stack traces, instrumenting code to capture execution state, and walking call graphs upstream to find where invalid data or state first entered the system. By emphasizing defense-in-depth, it ensures that once a bug is identified, multiple layers of validation are implemented to prevent similar regressions, making it an essential tool for maintaining high-integrity codebases and resolving complex, non-obvious errors.

Key Features

011 GitHub stars

02Verification checklists for deterministic fixes

03Test suite bisection to find polluting tests

04Defense-in-depth guard implementation

05Systematic backward call-chain tracing

06Deep instrumentation for stack and state capture

Use Cases

01Debugging errors deep inside async call stacks or worker tasks

02Tracing invalid data back to the original input or fixture

03Identifying side-effects from polluting tests in a CI/CD pipeline

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-engineering-excellence tools-debugging-root-cause

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill

Key Features

011 GitHub stars

02Verification checklists for deterministic fixes

03Test suite bisection to find polluting tests

04Defense-in-depth guard implementation

05Systematic backward call-chain tracing

06Deep instrumentation for stack and state capture

Use Cases

01Debugging errors deep inside async call stacks or worker tasks

02Tracing invalid data back to the original input or fixture

03Identifying side-effects from polluting tests in a CI/CD pipeline

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-engineering-excellence tools-debugging-root-cause

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill