Android Debugging

Purpose

Diagnose Android issues with hypothesis-ranked investigation, reproducible experiments, and evidence-based root-cause closure.

Scope and authority

This skill is root-cause authority for incident triage and narrowing workflow.

When not to use

• when the primary question is architecture topology rather than incident diagnosis (android-architecture)
• when the task is release go/no-go decision without active root-cause investigation (android-release-engineering)

When to use

• intermittent crashes and inconsistent behavior
• cross-layer regressions
• environment- or device-specific failures

Decision engine workflow

1. Define symptom, scope, and impact.
2. Build reproducibility matrix.
3. Rank hypotheses by likelihood and blast radius.
4. Add targeted instrumentation.
5. Run narrowing experiments and update confidence per hypothesis.
6. Propose fix candidates and verification path.

Branching decision tree

Branch A: reproducibility state

• reproducible:
  • run controlled experiments and binary-search recent changes
• non-reproducible:
  • invest first in telemetry and environment narrowing before proposing fixes

Branch B: incident severity

• production-impacting:
  • optimize for fast containment and rollback-safe mitigation
• non-blocking:
  • optimize for high-confidence root-cause isolation before code change

Branch C: issue class

• crash-heavy:
  • prioritize crash signature clustering and deterministic repro around top signatures
• ANR/jank-heavy:
  • prioritize thread-state and timing instrumentation; escalate to android-performance
• data-integrity risk:
  • prioritize correctness containment and rollback-safe mitigations

Quantitative gates

Use measurable debugging gates before declaring closure:

• reproducibility gate:
  • pass when deterministic repro or high-signal repro matrix exists
  • at-risk when repro is intermittent but bounded
  • fail when no meaningful repro path exists
• evidence convergence gate:
  • pass when top hypothesis has converging signals across independent instrumentation
  • at-risk when signals are partially convergent
  • fail when evidence conflicts materially
• verification gate:
  • pass when proposed fix eliminates symptom in controlled validation runs
  • at-risk when partial improvement only
  • fail when regression or no improvement appears

Uncertainty protocol

Always provide confidence per primary hypothesis:

• High (>= 0.80)
• Medium (0.60-0.79)
• Low (< 0.60)

If confidence is medium/low:

• list assumptions explicitly
• request minimum additional evidence needed to finalize root cause
• provide at least one fallback containment option
• escalate to supporting skill by domain when cross-skill impact is material

Cross-skill handoff payload

Use the standard payload defined in ../../AGENTS.md (section: Cross-skill handoff contract). Set requesting_skill to android-debugging.

Output contract

Follow global order from ../../AGENTS.md:

1. Context and constraints
2. Decision and rationale
3. Alternatives considered
4. Tradeoffs
5. Risks and mitigations
6. Confidence and unknowns
7. Cross-skill impacts
8. Next implementation steps

Then include debugging-specific artifacts:

• Observed symptoms
• Most likely root causes
• Reproduction strategy
• Instrumentation plan
• Narrowing experiments
• Fix candidates and verification

Anti-pattern detection

• guess-based fixes without evidence
• no reproducible baseline
• noisy logs without diagnostic hypothesis
• deep refactor before root cause confirmation

Related resources

• references/debugging-playbook.md
• templates/debug-investigation.md