Self-hosted alternatives to principle-fix-root-causes

P

principle-fix-root-causes

Apply when debugging

principle-fix-root-causes is an agent skill from Cursor's plugins collection that applies a working principle when debugging: fix the fault, not the place where it appeared. The symptom is where a wrong state became visible, and the root cause is the first place the system did something it should not, or failed to handle a state it should. The skill says a symptom fix hides the evidence and leaves the underlying fault free to surface somewhere else, and that each workaround makes the system harder to reason about, because it carries code for a bug nobody named. The pattern is to reproduce the problem first, then ask why at each step until the answer is a wrong decision in the code rather than a consequence of an earlier fault. When stuck, the agent should instrument the code, reading the actual error and the actual state rather than guessing. A guard, such as a nil check, counts as a fix only when the state it handles is one the system can legitimately be in, and the skill warns against guards that merely silence an error. The principle suits debugging sessions where a fix seems to work but the same problem returns elsewhere. It is listed on skills.sh, where the page shows install counts and GitHub stars for the Cursor plugins repository. Install it with npx skills add https://github.com/cursor/plugins --skill principle-fix-root-causes.