Workflow General Debugging

Skill: Workflow - General Debugging

Workflow for general debugging tasks in a pristine branch or project work, without the overhead of issue tracking. Use this skill when investigating crashes, hangs, or unexpected behavior where no specific issue ID is provided.

Principles

1. Lightweight & Focused: Focus on the immediate problem without the overhead of issue tracking conventions (e.g., regress-<id> naming, Bug: tags) unless requested.
2. Efficient Investigation: Prioritize quick root cause analysis using GDB and targeted code reading over exhaustive documentation.
3. Pristine Branch Work: Assume you are working on a clean branch or ongoing project work where changes are local.
4. Architectural Skepticism: Always question your fix. Ensure it addresses the root cause and not just a symptom.

Workflow

1. Problem Triage

• Reproduce the issue if possible.
• Analyze the symptom (crash, hang, incorrect output).
• If a repro script is available, do not modify it directly. Create a scratch copy for investigation.

2. Static & Dynamic Analysis

• Use code_search or grep_search to locate relevant code based on stack traces or symptoms.
• Use GDB (gdb-mcp) to inspect runtime state, set breakpoints, and trace execution.
• Focus on understanding the immediate failure context before expanding the scope.

3. Propose Fix

• Develop a minimal fix targeting the root cause.
• Follow V8 Best Practices.
• Architectural Skepticism: Argue against your own proposal. Does it disable optimizations? Does it violate invariants?

4. Verify

• Create a Regression Test: Design and implement a clean, semantic regression test. Verify it fails on the unfixed code and passes cleanly on the fixed code.
• Verify the fix against the repro or by running relevant unit tests.
• Ensure no new failures are introduced in related areas.

5. Finalization

• Format the code using git cl format.
• Present the Fix & Test: Present both the fix diff and the accompanying working regression test to the user/main agent.
• Do not create commits or upload CLs unless explicitly requested.