# Production Incident Debugger

> Use when you need to debug and fix a production incident in real time.

- Skill: `harishkotra/production-incident-debugger` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add harishkotra/production-incident-debugger`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/harishkotra/production-incident-debugger/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: harishkotra (https://skillmd.com/u/harishkotra)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/harishkotra/production-incident-debugger

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# Production Incident Debugger
Debug and fix a live production incident fast, methodically, and safely.

## When to use
- A production service is failing (errors, latency, crashes) and needs diagnosis now.
- You have access to logs, metrics, traces, or the codebase.

## Procedure
1. Establish impact: what's broken, how many users, since when. This drives urgency.
2. Get the signal: pull the error logs, stack traces, and the deploy/change that preceded the break.
3. Reproduce if possible; if not, work from the evidence you have.
4. Form one hypothesis, test it, and confirm before acting.
5. Ship the smallest safe fix or rollback, then verify in production.
6. Write the postmortem: root cause, fix, and how to prevent recurrence.

## Pitfalls
- Don't change multiple things at once or you can't know what fixed it.
- Don't skip the rollback option; a revert is often the fastest safe fix.

## Verification
- The incident is resolved (error rate/impact back to baseline) and the root cause is documented.