Systematic Debugging

by HezaoHezao

Systematic Debugging is a Quality skill for Claude Code, published by HezaoHezao in poirot.

185 stars8 forkson HezaoHezao/poirotAdded 2026/08/11+48% in starsRepository updated 2026/07/28

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agentagent-memoryagent-skillagent-skillsagentic-aiagentsai-agentai-agentsai-codingmemorymemory-systemmulti-agent

Install in seconds

Install Systematic Debugging

Copy Systematic Debugging into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/HezaoHezao/poirot/tree/master/poirot/backend/agents/skill/builtin_skills/core/systematic-debugging ~/.claude/skills/systematic-debugging

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/HezaoHezao/poirot.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: poirot/backend/agents/skill/builtin_skills/core/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md in HezaoHezao/poirot
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/systematic-debugging
Collection: One of 37 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Quality — 1354 skills

What Systematic Debugging does

A disciplined 4-phase debugging methodology that forces root cause investigation before attempting any fix. Use for test failures, production bugs, or unexpected behavior to avoid random patches.

Systematic Debugging is cataloged under Quality on DirSkills. Systematic Debugging comes from a repository tagged agent, agent-memory, agent-skill, agent-skills and agentic-ai.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Systematic Debugging

Overview

Random fixes waste time and create new bugs. Quick patches mask underlying issues.

Core principle: ALWAYS find root cause before attempting fixes. Symptom fixes are failure.

The Iron Law

NO FIXES WITHOUT ROOT CAUSE INVESTIGATION FIRST

If you haven't completed Phase 1, you cannot propose fixes.

The feedback loop is the debugging work. Before reading code to build a theory, create or identify a tight command that can go red on the user's exact symptom and green when the bug is fixed. A tight loop is fast, deterministic, agent-runnable, and specific enough to catch this bug — not merely "doesn't crash".

When a clean repro is hard, spend disproportionate effort building the loop.

When to Use

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Systematic Debugging

What else does HezaoHezao publish alongside Systematic Debugging?
Systematic Debugging is one of 37 skills that DirSkills catalogs from HezaoHezao/poirot, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Academic Paper Review, ArXiv Research and Architecture Diagram. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Systematic Debugging does, and is maintained by HezaoHezao in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the HezaoHezao/poirot page.
How does Systematic Debugging compare to other Quality skills?
Systematic Debugging ranks #1272 by stars among the 1354 Quality skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Benchmark, Benchmark Optimization Loop and API Design Patterns. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Systematic Debugging against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.