About principle-fix-root-causes
A debugging skill that guides developers to reproduce problems, trace them to their underlying cause, and fix the pattern rather than masking symptoms. It also highlights persistent state as a likely source of failures that appear after a restart.
Key features
- 01Reproduce issues before fixing
- 02Trace symptoms to root causes
- 03Search for and fix recurring patterns
- 04Use instrumentation instead of guessing
- 05Check persistent state after restarts
Use cases
- 01Investigate crashes and error reports
- 02Diagnose failures that follow a restart
- 03Remove repeated symptom-level workarounds
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.
Details
From the project READMEFix Root Causes
When debugging, do not paper over 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 (if you can't reproduce it, you can't verify your fix)
- Ask "why" until you hit the root cause
- Resist the urge to add guards (adding a nil check to silence a crash is a symptom fix)
- 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
Code doesn't change between runs. State does. 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.