investigate SKILL.md skillA
investigate from gufranco/claude-engineering-rules is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add gufranco/claude-engineering-rules/investigate@git:20261029.efb6501Pins git:20261029.efb6501 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- gufranco/claude-engineering-rules
- Path
skills/investigate/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- git:20261029.efb6501, committed Oct 29, 2026
- First version recorded
- May 27, 2026
- Size
- 17,638 bytes
- Repository stars
- 3
- License
- MIT
Systematic debugging with hypothesis testing, bounded retries, and optional edit freeze. Use when user says "debug this", "investigate", "why is this failing", "find the bug", "trace this error", "root cause", or needs structured debugging beyond reading an error message. For incident postmortems, use /incident; for code review, use /review; for running tests, use /test.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
## Overview Structured debugging workflow that enforces hypothesis-driven investigation with a hard limit on fix attempts. Prevents the common failure mode of guessing at fixes in a loop. The full debugging methodology is in [`standards/debugging.md`](../../standards/debugging.md). This skill operationalizes it as an interactive workflow. ## When to Use - A test, build, request, or job fails and the cause is not visible in the error message itself. - A behavior is intermittent, slow, or wrong only under some inputs, and a reproduction loop has to be built first. - A first fix attempt already failed and the next one needs a ranked hypothesis rather than another guess. - For a production outage write-up, use `/incident`; for reviewing a diff, use `/review`; for running the suite, use `/test`. ## Arguments - No arguments: interactive mode. Ask what the problem is. - `<description>`: start investigating the described issue. - `--freeze <path>`: restrict all file edits to the specified directory for the duration of the investigation. Uses the freeze-scope mechanism of the [`/guard`](../guard/SKILL.md) skill. - `--unfreeze`: remove any active freeze scope and exit. ## Redact …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add gufranco/claude-engineering-rules/investigate@sha256:5006f209167adf09The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20261029.efb6501, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_zli64dpbuzbviala)
2 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between May 27, 2026 and Oct 29, 2026, about one every 39 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20261029.efb6501 latest | 2026-10-29 | efb6501 | 17,638 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261013.02cb8cd | 2026-10-13 | 02cb8cd | 17,572 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261012.84ebb18 | 2026-10-12 | 84ebb18 | 17,379 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260601.6d57978 | 2026-06-01 | 6d57978 | 9,362 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260527.6d7d562 | 2026-05-27 | 6d7d562 | 6,428 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (17638 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
gufranco/claude-engineering-rules · 3 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-30 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_zli64dpbuzbviala GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=gufranco/claude-engineering-rules/investigate GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/5006f209167adf094530461720e4ea32cad73a4cf46cd814ac701f9b683e3a52
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.
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