Evidence-driven tracing lane that orchestrates competing tracer hypotheses in Claude built-in team mode
argument-hint
<observation to trace>
agent
tracer
level
2
Trace Skill
Use this skill for ambiguous, causal, evidence-heavy questions where the goal is to explain why an observed result happened, not to jump directly into fixing or rewriting code.
This is the orchestration layer on top of the built-in tracer agent. The goal is to make tracing feel like a reusable OMC operating lane: restate the observation, generate competing explanations, gather evidence in parallel, rank the explanations, and propose the next probe that would collapse uncertainty fastest.
Good entry cases
Use /oh-my-claudecode:trace when the problem is:
ambiguous
causal
evidence-heavy
best answered by exploring competing explanations in parallel
Explicitly down-rank hypotheses that depend mostly on lower tiers when stronger contradictory evidence exists.
Strong falsification / disconfirmation rules
Every serious /trace run must try to falsify its own favorite explanation.
For each top hypothesis:
collect evidence for it
collect evidence against it
state what distinctive prediction it makes
state what observation would be hard to reconcile with it
identify the cheapest probe that would discriminate it from the next-best alternative
Down-rank a hypothesis when:
direct evidence contradicts it
it survives only by adding new unverified assumptions
it makes no distinctive prediction compared with rivals
a stronger alternative explains the same facts with fewer assumptions
its support is mostly circumstantial while the rival has stronger evidence tiers
Team-mode orchestration shape
Use Claude built-in team mode for /trace.
The lead should:
Restate the observed result or “why” question precisely
Extract the tracing target
Generate multiple deliberately different candidate hypotheses
Spawn 3 tracer lanes by default in team mode
Assign one tracer worker per lane
Instruct each tracer worker to gather evidence for and against its lane
Run a rebuttal round between the leading hypothesis and the strongest remaining alternative
Detect whether the top lanes genuinely differ or actually converge on the same root cause
Merge findings into a ranked synthesis with an explicit critical unknown and discriminating probe
Important: workers should pursue deliberately different explanations, not the same explanation in parallel.
Default hypothesis lanes for v1
Unless the prompt strongly suggests a better partition, use these 3 default lanes:
Code-path / implementation cause
Config / environment / orchestration cause
Measurement / artifact / assumption mismatch cause — covers verification-method defects, not just system defects. Examples: the verification query reuses a single dimensional key across distinct entities, tenants, streams, or groups; the comparison filter shape does not match the schema grain; or the catalog or column name was assumed portable across runtimes without enumeration. This includes multi-entity premise/key-assumption mismatches.
For lane 3, cross-entity discrepancies need a premise audit before escalation: enumerate entity dimensions and check whether a zero-row or mismatch result came from applying one key across multiple entities rather than from a system defect; the result may be a verification-methodology defect.
These defaults are intentionally broad so the first slice works across bug, performance, architecture, and experiment tracing.
Mandatory cross-check lenses
After the initial evidence pass, pressure-test the leaders with these lenses when relevant:
