Diagnosing Bugs
A discipline for hard bugs and perf regressions: build a feedback loop first, bisect, instrument, redact secrets
- What
- A discipline for hard bugs and perf regressions: build a feedback loop first, bisect, instrument, redact secrets
- Cost
- Free
- Needs
- an AI agent harness (Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Antigravity, Hermes, or Muse) with access to your repo and its test/build tooling
- Install
- Copy the installer prompt below into your Muse — your agent does the rest.
Curated by Skill Harbor — the craft lesson distilled to one line: "if you have a tight pass/fail signal, you will find the cause; without one, no amount of staring at code will save you." Phase 1 is always building a feedback loop (a failing test, a curl, a CLI invocation); then bisection to narrow, instrumentation to see, and redaction of secrets (<REDACTED>) before showing any outputs to a human. Skip phases only when explicitly justified. Distinct from obra's systematic-debugging (lot 34, four-phase root-cause process): this one is the "tight signal" discipline for hard bugs and performance regressions. Also distinct from the stale `diagnose` skill dropped in lot 33 — different id, repo path, and content; the word "diagnose" in its description is just a trigger keyword. By @mattpocock, listed here with credit to its creator. Skill Harbor never reviews the code, review it yourself before use.
Version:
Install
Prerequisites: an AI agent harness (Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Antigravity, Hermes, or Muse) with access to your repo and its test/build tooling Install "Diagnosing Bugs" for me. A discipline for hard bugs and perf regressions: build a feedback loop first, bisect, instrument, redact secrets Repository: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/diagnosing-bugs/SKILL.md 1. Fetch the SKILL.md file for the mattpocock-diagnosing-bugs skill from the repository into a temporary folder and summarize what it does in one or two sentences. 2. Safety check: review the SKILL.md and scripts for anything suspicious (unexpected network calls, shell commands, credential harvesting). This repo should contain zero secrets in code, credentials only via the secure vault, allowed hosts declared in the SKILL.md. Verify that holds here; STOP on any red flag and tell me. 3. Install it as a skill: copy SKILL.md and its helper files into the agent's skills directory, in a folder named "mattpocock-diagnosing-bugs". 4. Verify with no network calls: frontmatter valid, files in place. 5. Report what was installed, where, and what I still need to do myself (e.g. any accounts, API keys, or CLI tools mentioned in the prerequisites above). GitHub is optional: if I have a GitHub account or the gh CLI, you may use it; otherwise public access is fine. Never require it unless it's in the prerequisites above. Rules: don't touch anything outside the temp folder and the install target. Never ask me to paste secrets in chat — credentials go through the secure vault or environment variables. If anything looks off, stop and ask me.
Questions
How do I install a build?
Every product page includes a copy-paste install prompt. Paste it into your Muse and it sets the build up for you — no manual configuration.
Where does my money go?
Straight to the seller. Skill Harbor never processes payments: checkout happens on the seller’s own page, usually Stripe.
What does the ✓ next to a creator’s name mean?
It means we confirmed the identity of the person behind the listing. It says nothing about the code itself — always check a build before installing it.