Description
debugging-and-error-recovery is an agent skill from Addy Osmani's agent-skills collection for systematic, root-cause debugging. When something breaks, the skill tells the agent to stop adding features, preserve the evidence, and follow a structured process to find and fix the cause, because guessing wastes time. Its triage checklist covers test failures, build errors, runtime bugs and production incidents. The skill's central rule is stop the line: when anything unexpected happens, work stops until the cause is understood. It applies when tests fail after a code change, when the build breaks, when runtime behavior does not match expectations, when a bug report arrives, when an error appears in logs or the console, and when something that worked before has stopped working. The skill is listed on skills.sh, with its security audit results shown there. The collection links it to other skills: observability instrumentation makes this kind of diagnosis faster next time, and the performance optimization skill covers measured slowness. It suits developers and agents who need to find the real cause of a failure rather than patch its symptoms.…
Highlights
- Structured root-cause triage
- Stop-the-line rule for unexpected failures
- Covers tests, builds, runtime bugs and incidents
- Preserves evidence before changing code
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debugging-and-error-recovery FAQ
What does the debugging-and-error-recovery skill do?
It guides a structured, root-cause debugging process for failing tests, broken builds, unexpected runtime behavior and production incidents.
How do I install it?
Run: npx skills add https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills --skill debugging-and-error-recovery
What is the stop-the-line rule?
When something unexpected happens, stop adding features, preserve the evidence and find the cause before continuing.
Which situations does it cover?
Failing tests after a change, broken builds, behavior that does not match expectations, bug reports, errors in logs or the console, and regressions.
What security checks has it passed?
skills.sh lists three audits: Gen Agent Trust Hub Pass, Socket Pass and Snyk Warn. A Warn or Fail is worth reading before you install.
What are the best debugging-and-error-recovery alternatives?
Popular alternatives to debugging-and-error-recovery include debug, debug-zoom and diagnosing-superpowers. See all debugging-and-error-recovery alternatives