principle-fix-root-causes
An agent skill by cursor, from cursor/plugins. Tags: analysis, debugging, performance, troubleshooting, validation.
What it does
Apply when debugging. Trace each symptom to its root cause and fix it there; reproduce first, ask why until you reach it, resist nil-check guards that silence crashes.
Install
With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:
npx skills add cursor/plugins --skill principle-fix-root-causesOr copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills directory by hand (~/.claude/skills for every project, or .claude/skills inside one):
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cursor/plugins
cp -r plugins/pstack/skills/principle-fix-root-causes ~/.claude/skills/principle-fix-root-causesSafety box score
Grade A, minimal risk: 0 of 100 risk points, rated 2026-10-19. The grade rates what the skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. How the score works.
This skill is documentation-only debugging guidance in a single markdown file. It does not ship executable code, network fetches, file edits, or privileged actions, so the main risk is just the normal behavior of the agent following the advice during debugging.
| Category | Level | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Code & shell execution | 0 (none) | `SKILL.md` contains prose only; there are no scripts, shell commands, or code evaluation steps. |
| Network access | 0 (none) | No URLs are fetched or remote hosts contacted; the file is purely local guidance. |
| Filesystem reach | 0 (none) | The skill does not instruct reading or writing specific files outside the project, only general debugging advice. |
| Secrets & credentials | 0 (none) | It does not ask for tokens, passwords, `.env` files, keychains, or other credentials. |
| Privilege & persistence | 0 (none) | There is no mention of sudo, service installation, shell startup changes, or other privilege-altering actions. |
| Instruction hijack surface | 0 (none) | The text does not tell the agent to ignore its rules, hide things, or follow remote instructions; it is ordinary debugging guidance. |
| Irreversible actions | 0 (none) | It does not perform or request pushes, deletes, sends, deploys, or other external side effects. |
| Transparency | 0 (none) | All shipped content is a single readable markdown file; there are no binaries, blobs, or generated installers. |
Before installing
- Read `SKILL.md`; it is a text-only debugging guide with no code or setup steps.
Rated 2026-10-19 by an automated review of 1 file from the skill's repository.
Source
- Repository
- cursor/plugins (all skills from this repository)
- Path
- pstack/skills/principle-fix-root-causes/SKILL.md
- Branch
- main
- Collection
- cursor
- Updated
- 2026-09-23
Related skills
- diagnosing-bugs — Diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions. Use when the user says "diagnose"/"debug this", or reports something broken/throwing/failing/slow.
- investigate-first — Diagnose ambiguous failures before editing.
- blast-radius — Find what a change could break somewhere else before it ships, beyond the diff.
- debug-voice — Use when the user runs /debug-voice, says voice mode has flaws, asks to see or capture what happened in a Grok realtime voice session.
- fix-ci — Find failing PR checks, inspect logs or external check links, and apply focused fixes
- reproduce-and-fix-issues — Reproduce triaged Slack bugs through a configured app-control adapter, verify existing fixes.