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.
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-debuggingTrust audit
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- Resolved (HTTP 200), passed
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- Resolves · 287,591 stars, passed
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- Transcribed from the author's own page, passed
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- Last updated 2 months ago, passed
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- Credited to Jesse Vincent, passed
Goes well with
diagnosing-bugs
A diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions.
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
DebuggingFull page & trust audit →webapp-testing
Drives a local web app with Playwright.
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