Root Cause Analysis
1. Gather Evidence
- Capture the failing request and response.
- Capture the exact assertion failure.
- Capture environment details, auth details, and dependency behavior.
- Capture container or stub logs when relevant.
2. Identify The Failure Class
- Classify the failure as environment, auth, contract drift, test data, dependency outage, assertion bug, or application defect.
- State the most likely root cause first.
- State competing hypotheses only when evidence is incomplete.
3. Produce The Diagnosis
- State what failed.
- State why it most likely failed.
- State how to confirm it.
- State the recommended fix.
4. Troubleshooting
- Problem: The evidence is incomplete. Fix: State the gap and request the missing artifact explicitly.