# Systematic debugging

> Finds the root cause before touching code: reproduce, trace back to the source, form one hypothesis at a time, then fix.

Canonical: https://mikereams.com/ai/systematic-debugging

Skill · Curated · Debugging · updated 2026-10-01. Part of the [AI Library](https://mikereams.com/ai).

What you get: A root cause with the evidence for it, and a fix at the source instead of a patch where the symptom showed.

- I dropped the evaluation fixtures and a shell script that ran an unscoped test command.

Source: [obra/superpowers](https://github.com/obra/superpowers/tree/8ca22db/skills/systematic-debugging) by Jesse Vincent (MIT), reviewed at 8ca22db. Not hosted here.

Reviewed 2026-10-01.

Tags: root cause, debugging, tracing