Pattern: Systematic debugging

Don’t guess at fixes. Follow a disciplined loop — reproduce → minimize → hypothesize → instrument → fix — tracking hypotheses against evidence so each step shrinks the problem or rules out a cause.

Applied by (backlinks)

Matt Pocock — Skills for Real Engineers:

• mp-diagnosing-bugs — the explicit reproduce→minimize→hypothesize→instrument→fix loop.

GSD:

• gsd-debugger — investigates bugs with persistent session state for hypotheses and evidence.

Addy Osmani — Agent Skills:

• addy-debugging — evidence-driven reproduce→hypothesize→fix loop, no guessing.

Compound Engineering:

• ce-debug — causal-chain root-cause with explicit prediction-confirmation before the fix.

gstack:

• gstack-investigate — Iron Law: no fixes without investigation; auto-freezes scope; stops after 3 failed fixes.
• gstack-ios-fix — the autonomous iOS analogue.

Superpowers:

• sp-systematic-debugging — a four-phase process (investigate → pattern → hypothesis → fix); Iron Law “no fixes without root-cause investigation first”; question the architecture after 3 failed fixes — the same stop-after-3 discipline as gstack-investigate.

See Also

• pattern-test-driven-development — the sibling feedback loop for new code.
• stage-implement — the stage where this applies.