| name | instrument-dont-guess |
| description | Use when a fix has failed two consecutive times for the same symptom. Encodes the discipline that the third action must be a temporary diagnostic (a /_diag endpoint, an enriched structured log, a runtime-captured snapshot) rather than another fix attempt. Also covers the discipline for removing those diagnostics once the real root cause is in. |
Instrument-don't-guess
When a fix fails twice, the third attempt is not "another fix." It is a diagnostic — a temporary endpoint, an enriched log, a runtime-captured snapshot — that turns the next iteration from a guess into a measurement. Guessing past two failed fixes costs more time than the diagnostic does. Battle-scarred from several Nango / Worker / persona-deploy sessions where the third, fourth, fifth fix attempt all missed the real cause that was visible in 30 seconds of structured logging.
The trigger
After two consecutive fix attempts for the same symptom have failed (deploy still 500s on the same call, sync still no-ops, webhook still doesn't fire), stop. The next thing you ship to production is a diagnostic, not a fix.
A "fix attempt" is any code/config change you reasonably believed would resolve the symptom. Two of those, both shipped to where the symptom occurs, both failing to resolve it.
What counts as "same symptom":
- Same error class, same code path, same downstream signal.
- A "different" error that's clearly the next downstream step of the same code path is still the same symptom (e.g. "the 500 is now a 502" is not progress; you just changed where the error surfaces).
What the diagnostic must do
The diagnostic captures ground truth about runtime state at the failure point, structured for easy reading:
- The actual values of variables the fix logic depends on. Not "config.foo seemed wrong" — the literal value of
config.foo at the moment of failure, the type, whether it's null vs undefined vs "".
- The actual code path taken. Not "I assume it went through branch A" — log the branch.
- The actual upstream call results (when the failure is downstream of an integration call): the HTTP status, the response body excerpt (redacted), the latency, the request headers (redacted).
- The actual resource bindings at runtime (when on a serverless platform): does
Resource.X.value return the expected value at the line of use? process.env.X? Both? Neither?
Forms of diagnostic, by environment:
- HTTP endpoint (Next.js, Worker): a temporary
/api/_diag/<name> route that exercises the failing code path and returns the captured state as JSON. Gated by a header or query secret so it isn't open to the world.
- Enriched structured log at the failure point:
log.error("diag:<run-name>:<step>", { actualValue, actualType, branchTaken, upstreamStatus, upstreamBodyExcerpt }).
- CloudWatch / Workers Logs probe at deploy boot: confirm the resource bindings landed (this is the canonical cloud-repo
[boot] resource binding check FAILED pattern).
- Runtime snapshot file: in a long-lived process, write the captured state to
/tmp/diag-<name>-<ts>.json for later read.
What the diagnostic must NOT do
- Mutate production data.
- Mask the symptom (a try/catch that just logs and returns 200 is anti-diagnostic).
- Carry secrets in cleartext.
- Stay in production after the root cause is in.
Procedure
- Define the question. Write a one-sentence question the diagnostic will answer. "Is
Resource.NangoSecretKey.value non-empty at the entry of /api/v1/sync/refresh in the Worker runtime?" Not "what's wrong with the sync."
- Build the smallest diagnostic that answers the question. No general-purpose dashboards; one question, one diagnostic. Often <30 lines.
- Ship it through CI. Diagnostics are not "manual prod deploy" exceptions — they go through the same flow as fixes.
- Read the diagnostic output. Read it literally. The most common failure mode at this step is reading what you expected to see rather than what's there. If
Resource.X.value === "", the value is the empty string, not "null-ish, probably a parsing issue, probably the secret seeding."
- Form the next-fix hypothesis from the diagnostic data, not from intuition. If the diagnostic says
Resource.X.value === "", the next fix is "trace why the SST link did not materialize," not "let me try a different code path."
- Ship the next fix. Verify the diagnostic flips from the failure state to the expected state.
- Revert the diagnostic in the same PR or an immediate follow-up. Diagnostics are temporary scaffolding. Forgetting to revert leaves a
/_diag endpoint live in production indefinitely (the cloud-repo Phase 3 follow-up tracker has this exact item open).
When two failed fixes are actually two-of-different-things
Sometimes the two fixes addressed two different real bugs in series — each fix was correct for its layer, the second symptom is genuinely a new symptom. The signal: the symptom changed in kind, not just in surface. Different error class, different code path, different downstream signal.
In that case the two-failed-fix counter resets — you're on attempt one of a new symptom. But be honest about whether the symptom actually changed; the common rationalization is to call the same symptom a different one to avoid the diagnostic step.
Anti-patterns
- Guess-and-deploy loops. "Let me try X. ... still failing. Let me try Y. ... still failing. Let me try Z." Three deploys = three slots that could have been one diagnostic + one informed fix.
- Vague log messages.
log.error("something failed", err) — what was err.message exactly? What were the inputs? Replace with structured logs that capture the question's answer.
- Wrapping the symptom in retry. "It's flaky, let me add a retry" — sometimes correct; usually it's masking a deterministic bug that the diagnostic would reveal.
- Reading logs and seeing what you expected. Re-read the diagnostic output, character by character, against the one-sentence question from step 1.
- Leaving the diagnostic in. The temporary endpoint stays. The enriched log spams CloudWatch. Both have happened. Revert in the same PR cycle.
Real-world cases this discipline came out of
- The cloud-repo Nango sync 502: two fix attempts (timeouts, retry, request-handling) all missed that the Worker was using the core non-Hyperdrive db client. A diagnostic endpoint that logged
client.constructor.name at the failure point would have surfaced this in one cycle.
- The persona-deploy persist-persona-version INSERT failure: the symptom was a 500, the
errorResponse helper logged only error.message. Enriching the log to include error.code, error.detail, error.column, error.constraint, error.routine would have given the PG cause directly instead of triggering speculation.
- The Resource.NangoSecretKey.value
"" regression: visible in 30 seconds of a boot-time resource probe; was missed for >24h because the failure surfaced as a generic 500 downstream.
What this skill does NOT cover
- Whether to fix at all vs roll back (covered by
dormant-flip-and-rollback).
- The auto-merge bar for the fix PR (covered by
auto-merge-and-composition-safety).
- Cross-PR composition risk for the fix (covered by
auto-merge-and-composition-safety).
- The contract authority to ship the diagnostic (covered by
autonomous-run-contract; diagnostics ship under the same merge authority as fixes).
