Team — can others build on it?
Brief 95

Debuggability Audit

How hard it is to find out why something broke — whether the system helps a developer localize a failure or forces guesswork.

DEBUG.md4 phases7 lenses~2.7k chars

Free & open · no signup · read-only — it ends by asking · nothing leaves your machine

What it does

You are working inside this repo. Mission: judge how quickly a developer can go from "something is wrong" to "here is exactly why" — whether the code, logs, and tooling localize a failure or leave you guessing.

Read-only pass. Read logging, error handling, and observability setup; trace a real recent failure if you can. Change nothing but the report file.

What it looks for

7 lenses it looks through

Phase 2 sweeps the codebase through every one of these, citing file and line for each finding.

1

Reproducibility

can a reported bug be reproduced locally; seed data, fixtures, a way to replay

2

Developer logging

logs present, structured, and at a level that lets you trace a failure

3

Error context

do errors carry inputs, ids, and a stack, or vanish into a generic message

4

Stack traces & source maps

do production errors point back to real code

5

Correlation

request ids and tracing to follow one operation across layers or services

6

Local debugging

breakpoints, a REPL, running a single failing path in isolation

7

State inspection

can you see the data and state at the moment of failure

The deliverable

What lands in your repo

One structured report at the repo root — or in reports/, if you keep one — the same shape every time, ready for a teammate — or the optional Studio — to act on.

DEBUG.md
1
A diagnosis, walked
tracing a real failure, and where the trail went cold
2
Findings
each: gap · location · how it slows diagnosis · the fix
3
Instrumentation plan
the logs, ids, and hooks that would make failures self-explaining
4
Quick wins
the two changes that most improve time-to-root-cause
One file. Evidence-backed. It ends by asking before touching anything.
How it works

What it makes the agent do

Every Goal Prompt follows the same four steps, so results are consistent and repeatable — no matter which one you run.

1
Phase 1

Diagnose something

Pick a plausible failure (or a real recent bug) and try to diagnose it using only what the system provides.

2
Phase 2

Audit through 7 lenses

Reproducibility — can a reported bug be reproduced locally.

3
Phase 3

Curate

Rank by how much each gap slows a real diagnosis, weighted by how often that area breaks.

4
Phase 4

Report

Create DEBUG.md at repo root.

Get started

Three ways to run this Goal Prompt

01 · COPY

Paste it in

Copy it and paste it into your agent inside the repo you want checked.

02 · INSTALL

As a slash command

Install the goal plugin once — two commands — then just type /goal:debuggability.

1/plugin marketplace add GhostlyGawd/goal-prompts
2/plugin install goal@goal-prompts

Or install only this Goal Prompt as /goal-debuggability:

curl -fsSL https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/install | BRIEF=95 sh
03 · AGENT

From an agent (MCP)

Let an agent fetch it mid-conversation, or pull the raw Goal Prompt by URL.

https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/raw/95.md
Transparency

The exact prompt

Nothing hidden — this is the whole Goal Prompt, verbatim. Read it in a minute, edit it, or copy it as-is.

Read the full brief (2,659 characters)
# Goal: Debuggability Audit

You are working inside this repo. Mission: judge how quickly a developer can go from "something is wrong" to "here is exactly why" — whether the code, logs, and tooling localize a failure or leave you guessing.

Read-only pass. Read logging, error handling, and observability setup; trace a real recent failure if you can. Change nothing but the report file.

## Phase 1 — Diagnose something
- Pick a plausible failure (or a real recent bug) and try to diagnose it using only what the system provides.
- Note where you could see what happened and where the trail went cold.
- Check what a developer would reach for first: logs, a stack trace, a reproduction.

## Phase 2 — Audit through 7 lenses
1. **Reproducibility** — can a reported bug be reproduced locally; seed data, fixtures, a way to replay
2. **Developer logging** — logs present, structured, and at a level that lets you trace a failure
3. **Error context** — do errors carry inputs, ids, and a stack, or vanish into a generic message
4. **Stack traces & source maps** — do production errors point back to real code
5. **Correlation** — request ids and tracing to follow one operation across layers or services
6. **Local debugging** — breakpoints, a REPL, running a single failing path in isolation
7. **State inspection** — can you see the data and state at the moment of failure

## Phase 3 — Curate
- Rank by how much each gap slows a real diagnosis, weighted by how often that area breaks.
- For each, name the instrumentation that would have made the failure obvious.
- Separate "add logging" from "the design hides state"; flag the structural ones.

## Phase 4 — Report
Create `DEBUG.md` at repo root:
1. **A diagnosis, walked** — tracing a real failure, and where the trail went cold
2. **Findings** — each: gap · location · how it slows diagnosis · the fix
3. **Instrumentation plan** — the logs, ids, and hooks that would make failures self-explaining
4. **Quick wins** — the two changes that most improve time-to-root-cause

Start the report with today's date. If `DEBUG.md` already exists from a previous run, read it first and lead with what changed since.

## Rules
- Judge the path to root cause, not the presence of a logger
- Context at the point of failure beats a wall of logs after it
- No runtime code to debug in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
- If a `reports/` directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
- Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words
- Report only — end by asking which debuggability gaps to close first

House rules for this Goal Prompt

  • Judge the path to root cause, not the presence of a logger
  • Context at the point of failure beats a wall of logs after it
  • No runtime code to debug in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
  • If a reports/ directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
  • Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words
  • Report only — end by asking which debuggability gaps to close first
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