| name | trace |
| description | Evidence-driven tracing with competing hypotheses in parallel. Activate when user says: trace this, trace, why did this happen, root cause analysis, investigate why.
|
| argument-hint | <observation to trace> |
Trace
Evidence-driven causal tracing using competing hypotheses. Use for ambiguous, causal, evidence-heavy questions where the goal is to explain WHY something happened.
Good Entry Cases
- Runtime bugs and regressions
- Performance / latency behavior
- Architecture / premortem / postmortem analysis
- Config / routing / orchestration behavior
- "Given this output, trace back the likely causes"
Core Contract
Always preserve: Observation → Hypotheses → Evidence For → Evidence Against → Best Explanation → Critical Unknown → Discriminating Probe
Workflow
- Restate the observed result precisely
- Generate 3 deliberately different hypotheses:
- Code-path / implementation cause
- Config / environment / orchestration cause
- Measurement / artifact / assumption mismatch
- Assign @tracer to each hypothesis lane
- Each lane: evidence for, evidence against, critical unknown, discriminating probe
- Apply lenses: Systems, Premortem, Science
- Rebuttal round between top two hypotheses
- Rank, detect convergence, synthesize
Output
### Observed Result
[What happened]
### Ranked Hypotheses
| Rank | Hypothesis | Confidence | Evidence Strength |
|------|------------|------------|-------------------|
### Most Likely Explanation
[Current best explanation]
### Critical Unknown
[Single missing fact]
### Recommended Discriminating Probe
[Single next probe]
