smith-debug

SpecKit Debug Workflow

A diagnostic-only workflow that systematically investigates errors, failures, and unexpected behavior across Armory's services. Produces a structured debug report stored in the relevant system's .specify/ folder. Does NOT modify code — the report becomes input to /smith-bugfix if a fix is warranted.

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Vault Logging

Throughout this action, log significant events to the vault session log. Read the session log path from .smith/vault/.current-session. If the file is missing or the vault is not initialized, skip all logging silently.

Append entries using this format:

### [HH:MM:SS] /smith-debug <event>

**User Request:**
> <verbatim user message that triggered this action — capture the exact error description, symptoms, or question the user asked. Include any error messages they pasted.>

**Synthesized Input:** <brief summary of what's being investigated>
**Outcome:** <what happened>
**Artifacts:** <files created/modified>
**Systems affected:** <system IDs>

Log at these points:

1. On invocation — capture the verbatim user request AND the structured symptom description
2. After symptom capture — structured fields extracted
3. After triage — sub-agent findings summary
4. After diagnosis — root cause identified or hypotheses ranked
5. On completion — report path, user decision (bugfix/investigate/close)

Subagent Invocation Logging

Immediately before every Agent tool call in this workflow (especially the 4 triage agents in Phase 3), append a block to the session log. The Agent tool's return value does not expose subagent_type or model to the parent, so this is the only place that information can be captured.

### [HH:MM:SS] Subagent invoked: <description>

**Type:** <subagent_type or "general">
**Model:** <model override passed to Agent, or "inherited" if none>

After the Agent tool returns, the subagent-vault-writeback.sh hook automatically appends a matching "Subagent completed" block with metrics read from the sidechain transcript — do not duplicate that logging in the skill.

When to Use This

Use /smith-debug when:

• An error message or unexpected behavior needs investigation
• You're not sure what's broken or why
• Multiple services could be involved
• You want evidence before committing to a fix

Do NOT use when:

• The cause is already known and the fix is obvious — use /smith-bugfix directly
• You're building a new feature — use /smith-new

Natural Language Triggers

If the user says any of the following (or similar phrases), treat it as invoking this command:

• "debug this"
• "help me debug..."
• "can you investigate..."
• "I'm getting this error..."
• "why is X failing"
• "something is broken"
• "help me figure out why..."

When triggered by natural language, synthesize the conversation history into the symptom description and proceed as if that was passed as $ARGUMENTS.

Ledger Context (Optional)

If .smith/vault/ledger/ exists and contains non-empty files, load relevant Ledger sections to inform diagnosis. If the directory is missing, empty, or unreadable, skip silently — the Ledger is purely additive and never required.

1. Check: ls .smith/vault/ledger/*.md 2>/dev/null
2. If files exist, read the following sections (higher-confidence entries first, truncate at ~2000 tokens per file):
   • .smith/vault/ledger/antipatterns.md (past failure modes — directly useful for narrowing hypotheses)
   • .smith/vault/ledger/edge-cases.md (known weird states the system has hit before)
   • .smith/vault/ledger/project-quirks.md (project-specific gotchas — e.g., "this service takes 30s to start, don't assume crash")
   • .smith/vault/ledger/tool-preferences.md (which diagnostic tools/commands are known to work well in this project)
3. Use loaded entries as additional context during symptom capture, triage, and diagnosis. Especially use antipatterns.md to avoid re-investigating already-known failure modes from scratch, and project-quirks.md to skip false-positive theories. The Ledger informs judgment, it does not override evidence collected during this run.
4. Budget violation tracking: If any Ledger file was truncated (entries were dropped to fit within the ~2000 token budget per file), increment context_budget_violations in .smith/vault/ledger/.meta.json by 1. If .meta.json does not exist, create it from the default template first. This signal tells the reconciliation system that the Ledger is too large for the configured budget.

Phase 0: Activate Workflow Tracking

Before any file is written (debug reports, vault logs, etc.), create an active-workflow marker so the workflow-gate hook (PreToolUse) allows subsequent writes. Without this, even the debug-report Write at the end of Phase 5 would be denied. The workflow-gate hook exempts the shipped helper by basename (per spec/31-workflow-gate-bootstrap) so the bootstrap runs even when no marker exists yet:

SLUG=$(echo "${1:-debug}" | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]/-/g' | cut -c1-40)
BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null || echo unknown)
# Debug is read-only — no worktree, so use the current dir as the
# "worktree" sentinel. The helper still stamps the session log so
# workflow-summary attributes tokens correctly.
~/.smith/scripts/create-active-workflow.sh \
  --branch "debug-${SLUG}" \
  --workflow smith-debug \
  --slug "${SLUG}" \
  --worktree "$(pwd)"

(Falls back to scripts/create-active-workflow.sh in repo-dev layouts.)

The marker is cleared at the end of Phase 6 (Decision Gate) regardless of which option the user picks. Use the shipped helper so this works under a Bash(rm:*) deny rule:

.specify/scripts/bash/clear-active-workflow.sh "debug-${SLUG}"

Phase 1: Symptom Capture (Interactive if needed)

Extract or ask for these structured fields from the user's description:

Field	Description	Example
Error message	Exact text of error or unexpected output	[Errno 111] Connection refused
Trigger	What the user was doing when it happened	Running background reports
Conditions	What else was running, recent changes, environment state	Sentiment analysis running concurrently
Frequency	Always, sometimes, new, intermittent	Every time background reports run
Affected service(s)	Best guess from the symptom	content-engine, sentiment-engine

Interactive prompting

If the user's initial description is missing 2+ of these fields, ask a focused set of clarifying questions BEFORE proceeding. Present them as a numbered list the user can answer quickly:

To investigate this efficiently, I need a few more details:

[1] What exactly were you doing when this happened? (e.g., which button, command, or workflow)
[2] Does this happen every time, or only sometimes?
[3] Were any other operations running at the same time?
[4] When did this start? (always been this way, or recent change?)

Only ask for what's actually missing. If the description already covers 3+ fields, proceed directly — don't slow the user down with unnecessary questions.

If ALL fields are present in the initial description or $ARGUMENTS: skip prompting entirely and proceed to Phase 2.

Phase 2: System Detection

Determine which Armory system(s) this debug session relates to.

1. Map the symptom to systems using service-to-system mapping:

   • command-center / port 8080 → system-15-command-center
   • sentiment-engine / port 8081 → system-15-command-center (scoring subsystem)
   • content-strategy / port 8082 → system-12-content-social-engine
   • email-pipeline → system-03-email-archive-contact-graph
   • communication-triage → system-05-communication-triage
   • voice-training → system-04-personal-voice
   • openclaw / Jason / port 18789 → cross-system (agent layer)
   • social-listening → system-10-social-listening
   • trend-intelligence → system-13-trend-intelligence
   • n8n / port 5678 → system-01-infrastructure
   • postgres / neo4j / qdrant / redis → system-01-infrastructure
   • Docker / Colima / networking → system-01-infrastructure
   • Ollama / model loading → system-02-ai-models-layer

2. If ambiguous: pick the most likely primary system and note secondary systems.

3. Set the report path:

   .specify/systems/<primary-system>/debug/debug-YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md
   

   Create the debug/ directory if it doesn't exist.

Phase 3: Automated Triage (Parallel Sub-agents)

Launch up to 4 diagnostic sub-agents in parallel. Each is read-only — no code modifications.

3.1 Infrastructure Health Agent

Model: haiku Task: Check the health of all services and resource usage.

- Run: docker compose ps
- Run: bash scripts/health-check.sh
- Run: docker stats --no-stream --format "table {{.Name}}\t{{.CPUPerc}}\t{{.MemUsage}}\t{{.NetIO}}"
- Check if affected service(s) are running and healthy
- Check port availability for affected services
- Check Colima resource allocation: colima status
- Report: which services are up/down, resource pressure, port conflicts

3.2 Log Analysis Agent

Model: haiku Task: Search service logs for the error and surrounding context.

- Run: docker compose logs <affected-service> --tail 200 --timestamps
- Run: docker compose logs <upstream-dependencies> --tail 100 --timestamps
- Grep logs for the exact error message
- Grep for related patterns (connection refused, timeout, OOM, restart)
- Look for temporal correlation with other service errors
- Report: relevant log excerpts, error frequency, first occurrence timestamp

3.3 Dependency Trace Agent

Model: sonnet Task: Map the request path and check each hop.

- Identify the full request chain for the failing operation
  (e.g., UI → Express → FastAPI → Ollama → Qdrant)
- For each hop:
  - Is the upstream service reachable? (curl health endpoints)
  - Is the connection using the right host/port?
  - Are there resource contention issues? (shared Ollama, shared PG connections)
- Check docker-compose.yml for network configuration
- Check environment variables for correct service URLs
- Report: which hop fails, why, and what the expected vs actual behavior is

3.4 Spec & History Cross-Reference Agent

Model: haiku Task: Check if this is a known issue or related to recent changes.

- Read the primary system spec.md for known limitations or caveats
- Search specs/debug/ and .specify/systems/*/debug/ for prior debug reports with similar symptoms
- Run: git log --oneline -20 -- <affected-service-paths>
- Check if recent commits could have introduced the issue
- Search GitHub issues: gh issue list --search "<error keywords>" --limit 5
- Report: prior occurrences, related changes, known issues

Sub-agent Selection

Not all 4 agents are always needed. Select based on symptom:

Symptom type	Agents to launch
Connection refused / timeout	All 4
Wrong data / unexpected output	3.2 (logs) + 3.3 (trace) + 3.4 (history)
Slow performance	3.1 (health) + 3.2 (logs) + 3.3 (trace)
Service won't start	3.1 (health) + 3.2 (logs)
Intermittent failure	All 4
UI rendering issue	3.2 (logs) + 3.4 (history)

Phase 4: Diagnosis Synthesis

After sub-agents return, synthesize findings into a root cause analysis:

1. Correlate evidence across agents — look for consistent signals
2. Rank hypotheses by evidence strength:
   • Confirmed: Direct evidence from logs + reproduction
   • Probable: Strong circumstantial evidence (e.g., resource contention + timing)
   • Possible: Consistent with symptoms but lacking direct proof
3. Apply cognitive guards (from debugging principles):
   • Actively seek evidence that contradicts the leading theory
   • Match the fix to the cause, not to how scary the error looks
   • If you haven't checked "is the service running?", don't recommend code changes

Phase 5: Write Debug Report

Write the report to the path determined in Phase 2:

---
reported: YYYY-MM-DD
status: diagnosed | needs-investigation | cannot-reproduce
severity: blocking | degraded | cosmetic
primary_system: <system-folder-name>
also_affects:
  - <other-system-folder-name>
trigger: <what the user was doing>
error: <exact error text>
---

# Debug: <short description>

## Symptom
<Structured description from Phase 1>

## Evidence

### Infrastructure Health
<Agent 3.1 findings — service status, resource usage, port checks>

### Log Analysis
<Agent 3.2 findings — relevant log excerpts, error patterns>

### Dependency Trace
<Agent 3.3 findings — request path analysis, failing hop>

### Spec & History
<Agent 3.4 findings — prior occurrences, recent changes>

## Root Cause
<Identified cause OR ranked hypotheses with evidence for each>

### Confidence: <confirmed | probable | possible>
<Reasoning for the confidence level>

## Recommended Action
- [ ] **Fix via `/smith-bugfix`** — <one-liner description of the fix>
- [ ] **Config change** — <what to change and where>
- [ ] **Known limitation** — <document and accept>
- [ ] **Needs deeper investigation** — <what to investigate next>

## Related
- <links to relevant specs, issues, prior debug reports>

Phase 5.5: Update .meta Descriptions for Touched Methods (Conditional)

/smith-debug is read-only by design — it produces a debug report but does NOT modify source code. Skip this phase when the workflow has not written or edited any source file.

If the workflow DID write or edit any source file (e.g. a one-line probe insertion that was committed by accident, or a future evolution that allows targeted instrumentation), apply the v3 inline Task-spawning prose from /smith-bugfix Phase 3.5 step 3:

1. python3 ~/.smith/scripts/describe_discover.py --rel-path <p> --touched-only --touched-ids <ids>
2. python3 ~/.smith/scripts/describe_write.py build-prompt --rel-path <p> --method-ids <ids> [--module --purpose-shifted true]
3. Spawn ONE Task: subagent_type=general, model=claude-haiku-4-5, prompt = output of step 2.
4. Pipe the Task's JSON output into python3 ~/.smith/scripts/ describe_write.py apply --update-touched --rel-path <p> --purpose-shifted <true|false>.

Subscription billing via session auth (v3 / PR #23 inverted the orchestration; the v2 ANTHROPIC_API_KEY shell-out path is removed).

See /smith-bugfix Phase 3.5 for full identification, the purpose_shifted heuristic, and failure handling. The save hook preserves description bytes across re-saves, so any descriptions generated here survive subsequent edits (data-model.md §3.2). Missing descriptions are surfaced as non-blocking PR-body warnings by /smith-build (data-model.md §9).

Phase 6: Decision Gate

Present the diagnosis summary to the user and ask:

## Diagnosis Complete

**Root cause:** <one-sentence summary>
**Confidence:** <confirmed/probable/possible>
**Report saved:** .specify/systems/<system>/debug/debug-YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md

Would you like me to:
[1] Fix it — kick off /smith-bugfix with this diagnosis as context
[2] Investigate deeper — drill into <specific hypothesis or area>
[3] Close — the report is enough for now

If user selects [1] (Fix it):

• Invoke /smith-bugfix with the diagnosis context:
  • Pass the root cause, affected files, and recommended fix from the debug report
  • The bugfix workflow will reference the debug report in its spec cross-reference phase
  • The debug report's status updates to fix-in-progress

If user selects [2] (Investigate deeper):

• Ask what specific area to investigate
• Re-run the relevant sub-agent(s) with a more targeted scope
• Append findings to the existing debug report under a new ## Follow-up Investigation section
• Return to the decision gate

If user selects [3] (Close):

• Update the debug report status to closed or documented
• Log the diagnosis summary (root cause and confidence level) as a regular event entry in the session log
• Run the totals command and include the lines it prints verbatim at the bottom of the closing chat message. Pass the workflow's own session log via --session so totals survive a mid-workflow session-log rollover:

  # $SESSION was captured at workflow start. Fall back to .current-session.
  SESSION="${SESSION:-$(cat .smith/vault/.current-session 2>/dev/null)}"
  bash "$HOME/.claude/hooks/workflow-summary.sh" --totals-only --session "$SESSION"
  

  If it prints n/a (no workflow invocation found) and exits non-zero, do NOT present those as real numbers — note totals were unavailable and which session file was checked.
• The full === Workflow Summary === block is appended to the session log file automatically by the workflow-summary.sh Stop hook once the active-workflow file is cleaned up — that's for audit only, do not duplicate it in chat
• Log completion to vault

Clear Workflow Tracking (all three paths)

After Phase 6 completes — regardless of which option the user picked — remove the Phase 0 active-workflow marker so the workflow-gate hook returns to denying ad-hoc edits:

.specify/scripts/bash/clear-active-workflow.sh "debug-${SLUG}"

If option [1] (Fix it) was chosen, the marker is cleared before /smith-bugfix is invoked — the bugfix workflow creates its own marker.

Post-Workflow Reflection

After workflow completion (regardless of which Phase 6 option the user selected), trigger a Ledger reflection if enabled. Debug runs surface valuable signal — root causes, false hypotheses, diagnostic dead-ends — that should feed back into antipatterns.md and edge-cases.md for future runs.

1. Read .smith/config.json — if ledger.auto_reflect is true (default), proceed
2. Launch a non-blocking background sub-agent using the configured reflection model (default: Haiku):
   • Pass: current session log path, .smith/vault/ledger/ path, and the debug report path
   • The sub-agent runs the smith-reflect workflow
   • Do NOT wait for the sub-agent to complete
3. If .smith/config.json is missing or ledger.auto_reflect is false, skip silently

Post-Reflection Reconciliation Check

After reflection completes (or is skipped):

1. Read .smith/config.json — if ledger.reconcile.auto_reconcile is false, skip
2. Read .smith/vault/ledger/.meta.json — check signals against thresholds:
   • estimated_tokens > thresholds.total_tokens_max (default 30000)
   • context_budget_violations > thresholds.context_violations_threshold (default 3)
   • reinforcements_since_reconcile > thresholds.reinforcements_threshold (default 50)
3. Check minimum interval: if last_reconcile is less than minimum_hours_between_reconciles (default 6) hours ago, skip
4. If any threshold exceeded AND minimum interval has passed:
   • Launch a non-blocking background sub-agent using the configured reconcile_model (default: Haiku)
   • Pass: "Run /smith-ledger reconcile on this project"
   • Do NOT wait for the sub-agent to complete
5. If no threshold exceeded, .meta.json is missing, or config is missing, skip silently

Post-Workflow Sync (run last)

As the VERY LAST action — after the marker clear and the reflection/reconciliation launches above — Run /smith-sync from the primary repo. Debug is read-only and merges nothing, but it DOES write debug reports and session history into .smith/, which we want shared. /smith-sync sweeps those committable .smith/ artifacts into a chore(smith): … [skip ci] commit and pushes to the default branch.

Note: debug never creates a branch, so the repo may not be on the default branch when this runs. Per its own guard, /smith-sync will then skip with a clear report (it never switches the user's checkout) — the artifacts are captured on the next sync that runs on the default branch. Do NOT block on the background reflection sub-agent.

Key Rules

• Read-only: This workflow NEVER modifies application code, configs, or Docker services
• No premature fixes: Gather evidence first, diagnose second, fix third (via bugfix handoff)
• Cheapest test first: Check if the service is running before analyzing code paths
• Parallel where possible: Launch sub-agents concurrently to minimize wall-clock time
• Preserve evidence: Log excerpts and findings go in the report, not just conclusions
• Cognitive guards: Actively fight anchoring bias — the first theory isn't always right
• System-scoped storage: Debug reports live alongside their system's specs, not in a global folder