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Agent skill

systematic-debugging

Jesse Vincent

Fires on any bug, failing test or surprise, and it fires before the agent is allowed to suggest a change. The order is the whole point: understand the failure, then propose. It is the counterweight to an agent that is eager to be helpful.

DebuggingUpdated 2 months ago287,591 stars

In the author’s words

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes

The description field from SKILL.md, quoted as written.

Read it before you install it

SKILL.md · 278 lines

Install on its own

Or add it to your stack above and install everything at once.

npx skills add https://github.com/obra/superpowers --skill systematic-debugging
Source ↗GitHub ↗skills.sh ↗Jesse Vincent

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Resolves · 287,591 stars, passed
Transcribed from the author's own page, passed
Last updated 2 months ago, passed
Credited to Jesse Vincent, passed

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Goes well with

  • diagnosing-bugs

    A diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions.

    Matt PocockDebugging

    Stops the agent from guessing at a fix. It reproduces, narrows, forms one hypothesis at a time and tests it, which is the difference between a bug being fixed and a symptom being buried.

    npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill diagnosing-bugs

  • webapp-testing

    Drives a local web app with Playwright.

    AnthropicTestingDebugging

    Lets the agent open your dev server, click through it, screenshot what it sees and read the browser console. The gap it closes is an agent that writes frontend code it has never actually run.

    npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/skills --skill webapp-testing

Work with us