← Library

Agent skill

diagnosing-bugs

Matt Pocock

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.

DebuggingUpdated 28 days ago263,533 stars

In the author’s words

Diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions. Use when the user says "diagnose"/"debug this", or reports something broken/throwing/failing/slow.

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

Read it before you install it

SKILL.md · 133 lines

Install on its own

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

npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill diagnosing-bugs
Source ↗GitHub ↗skills.sh ↗Matt Pocock

Trust audit

View the source ↗
100%verified
Resolved (HTTP 200), passed
Resolves · 263,533 stars, passed
Transcribed from the author's own page, passed
Last updated 28 days ago, passed
Credited to Matt Pocock, passed

All 5 checks passed when this was last run. Links were last checked on .

Goes well with

  • systematic-debugging

    Forces a method before any fix is proposed.

    Jesse VincentDebugging

    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.

    npx skills add https://github.com/obra/superpowers --skill systematic-debugging

  • 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