systematic-debugging

An agent skill by obra, from obra/superpowers. Tags: api, debugging, developer-tools, web.

What it does

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes

Install

With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:

npx skills add obra/superpowers --skill systematic-debugging

Or 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/obra/superpowers
cp -r superpowers/skills/systematic-debugging ~/.claude/skills/systematic-debugging

Safety box score

Not rated yet. A safety box score grades what a skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. Anyone can request one from this page; it is saved for everyone. How the score works.

Source

Repository

obra/superpowers (all skills from this repository)

Path

skills/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md

Branch

main

Updated

2026-09-19

Related skills

• debugging-and-error-recovery — Guides systematic root-cause debugging.
• observability-and-instrumentation — Instruments code so production behavior is visible and diagnosable. Use when adding logging, metrics, tracing, or alerting.
• performance-optimization — Optimizes application performance across frontend, backend, queries, and databases.
• security-and-hardening — Hardens code against vulnerabilities.
• diagnosing-superpowers — Use when a superpowers session went wrong and your human partner wants to know why — repeated work, ignored plans, stumbles, poor results.
• executing-plans — Use when executing an implementation plan in the current session as the implementer yourself — your human partner chose inline execution.