jkheadley/instar · skills/systematic-debugging/SKILL.md

systematic-debugging skillA

systematic-debugging is agent-read markdown (skill) from jkheadley/instar: Structured 4-phase debugging methodology that prevents blind probing and guesswork. Forces root cause identification before any fix attempt. Use when encountering bugs, errors, unexpected behavior, test failures, or when something "just stopped working." Trigger words: debug, bug, error, broken, not working, fix this, something's wrong, investigate, root cause, why is this failing, trace the issue..

Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.

How to install

Latest version
mdr add jkheadley/instar/systematic-debugging@v1.0
Exact content
mdr add jkheadley/instar/systematic-debugging@sha256:445529828b83a6d2

Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.

Badge

mdr badge

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_bvben7bn4cnadyu2.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_bvben7bn4cnadyu2)

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Versions

versioncommittedcommitsizeaudit
v1.0 latest2026-02-26 61c33cc 9,579 BA view

Audit of the latest version

A  17 of 17 checks passed. Deterministic, no model, same answer every run.
  • pass: Frontmatter block present
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a name
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a description
  • pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (9579 bytes)
  • pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
  • pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
  • pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
  • pass: No credential-shaped string
  • pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
  • pass: No text hidden with inline styles
  • pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
  • pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
  • pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
  • pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
  • pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
  • pass: No link to a raw IP address
  • pass: No script tag

Source

GitHub

jkheadley/instar · 77 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-06 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_bvben7bn4cnadyu2
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=jkheadley/instar/systematic-debugging
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/445529828b83a6d20a8aee74a087bffac08825b944f487a7e0daf53ddb7dd637