the-own-lab/debug-hypotheses
skills/debug-hypotheses/SKILL.md
/debug step: enumerate 3–5 plausible root causes with explicit uncertainty labels. No padding.
development
Updated Apr 22, 2026
$ install --global
skillsauthnpx skillsauth add the-own-lab/Claude-company-of-one debug-hypothesesInstall this skill globally with one command. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf.
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Last scanned: Apr 22, 2026, 11:15 AM143.4s1 file scanned
SKILL.md
- name:
- debug-hypotheses
- description:
- /debug step: enumerate 3–5 plausible root causes with explicit uncertainty labels. No padding.
debug-hypotheses
Purpose
First analytical step of /debug. Turn a user-reported symptom into a small set of
candidate root causes, each with a cheap validation path. This is the hypothesis
menu that debug-validate then burns down one at a time.
Inputs
BRIEF.md## Current Contract(which in/debugis the reproduction + symptom description).- Git log for the relevant area (recent changes are prior-probability high).
- Any test output or stack traces in the brief.
Outputs
BRIEF.mdappended block## Hypotheseswith 3–5 items:
### H1. {one-sentence hypothesis}
- Evidence for:
- Evidence against:
- Confidence: high | medium | low
- Validation: {one concrete command, file inspection, or test to confirm/refute}
Procedure
- Partition the possibility space: data, environment, recent code change, library bug, integration contract, concurrency, caching. Pick the 3–5 with actual evidence from the reproduction.
- For each hypothesis, write both evidence-for and evidence-against. An asymmetric list (only supporting evidence) is confirmation bias — rewrite it.
- Rank by a cheap-first rule: prefer hypotheses whose validation takes minutes,
not hours.
debug-validatewill test them in that order. - Explicitly label low-confidence ones
low. Do not pad to 5 if you only have 3.
Failure modes
- Fewer than 3 real hypotheses → the problem isn't understood yet; do more reproduction before moving on.
- More than 5 → split the investigation; a 7-way fan-out becomes shotgun debugging.
- A hypothesis with no
Validationstep → reject; every hypothesis needs a test.
Does not do
- Does not fix anything.
- Does not run validations (that is
debug-validate). - Does not file a TODO or CHANGELOG entry;
/debugdoes that viaupdate-docsafter fix.
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