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Root cause analysis skill. Iron Law: never fix a bug without stating the root cause. 5-step: Observe, Hypothesize, Trace Backwards, Isolate, Verify.
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| name | root-cause-trace |
| description | Root cause analysis skill. Iron Law: never fix a bug without stating the root cause. 5-step: Observe, Hypothesize, Trace Backwards, Isolate, Verify. |
| user-invocable | true |
Never fix a bug without stating the root cause in one sentence.
"This bug is caused by X in file Y at line Z because W."
If you cannot state this, you have not found the root cause yet.
Collect all available evidence without filtering:
git --no-pager log --oneline -10 2>&1git --no-pager diff HEAD~5 --stat 2>&1Form 2-3 candidate root causes ranked by likelihood.
Do not commit to one until you have evidence.
Starting from the failure point, trace backwards:
Use grep to follow the chain:
grep -rn 'function_name' --color=never . 2>/dev/null | head -20
Eliminate hypotheses one by one with evidence. When only one remains, that is the root cause.