About principle-fix-root-causes
A debugging skill that directs engineers to reproduce problems and trace them to their underlying causes instead of masking symptoms. It also highlights persistent state as an early suspect for failures that appear after a restart.
Key features
- 01Reproduce the problem first
- 02Trace causes by repeatedly asking why
- 03Avoid symptom-level guards and workarounds
- 04Search for and fix the broader pattern
- 05Use instrumentation instead of guessing
- 06Check persistent state after restart failures
Use cases
- 01Debugging recurring failures
- 02Investigating crashes and error reports
- 03Diagnosing problems that appear after restart
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/principle-fix-root-causesin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Bundled filesLICENSE
Details
From the project READMEFix Root Causes
When debugging, do not fix symptoms. Trace every problem to its root cause and fix it there.
Why: Symptom fixes accumulate. Each workaround makes the system harder to reason about, and the real bug remains. Root-cause fixes are slower upfront but reduce total debugging time.
Pattern:
- Reproduce first
- Ask "why" until you hit the root cause
- Do not add guards (adding a nil check to silence a crash is a symptom fix)
- If a workaround needs a paragraph-long comment to justify it, the code is wrong (fix the code, not the comment)
- Check for the pattern, not just the instance (grep for the same pattern, fix all instances)
- When stuck, instrument. Don't guess (add logging, read the actual error)
Restart bugs: suspect state before code
When something "fails after restart," suspect stale persistent state first: config files, caches, lock files, serialized state. If clearing a state file restores behavior, prioritize state validation as the fix.