michaelboeding

debug-council

5
0
# Install this skill:
npx skills add michaelboeding/skills --skill "debug-council"

Install specific skill from multi-skill repository

# Description

Research-aligned self-consistency for debugging. Spawns independent solver agents that each explore and debug the problem from scratch. Uses majority voting. Based on "Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning" (Wang et al., 2022). Use for critical bugs, algorithms, or when other approaches have failed.

# SKILL.md


name: debug-council
description: Research-aligned self-consistency for debugging. Spawns independent solver agents that each explore and debug the problem from scratch. Uses majority voting. Based on "Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning" (Wang et al., 2022). Use for critical bugs, algorithms, or when other approaches have failed.


Debug Council: Research-Aligned Self-Consistency

Pure implementation of self-consistency (Wang et al., 2022). Each agent receives the raw user prompt and explores/debugs independently. No pre-processing, no shared context. Majority voting selects the answer.

Use this for bugs and problems with ONE correct answer.

Step 0: Ask User How Many Agents

Before doing anything else, ask the user how many solver agents to use:

How many debug agents would you like me to use? (3-10)

Recommendations:
- 3 agents: Faster, still reliable
- 5 agents: Good balance
- 7 agents: High confidence
- 10 agents: Maximum confidence (critical bugs)

Note: Each agent will independently explore the codebase and find the bug.
This takes longer but provides true independence per the research.

Wait for the user's response. If they specified a number (e.g., "debug council of 5"), use that.

Minimum: 3 agents | Maximum: 10 agents


CRITICAL: Pure Research Alignment

What This Means

  1. NO orchestrator exploration - Do NOT read files or gather context before spawning agents
  2. Raw user prompt to all agents - Each agent gets the user's original request, unchanged
  3. Each agent explores independently - Agents discover the codebase themselves
  4. True independence - No shared context, no cross-contamination

Why This Matters

The research shows that independent samples converge on correct answers. If we pre-process or share context, we:
- Introduce orchestrator bias
- Reduce independence
- May miss what individual agents would discover


Workflow

Step 1: Capture the Raw User Prompt

Take the user's request exactly as stated. Do NOT:
- ❌ Read files first
- ❌ Explore the codebase
- ❌ Add context
- ❌ Rephrase or enhance the prompt

Just capture what the user said.

Step 2: Spawn Agents IN PARALLEL with RAW PROMPT

Spawn ALL agents simultaneously. Each gets the exact same raw prompt:

Task(agent: "debug-solver-1", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
Task(agent: "debug-solver-2", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
Task(agent: "debug-solver-3", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
... (all in the SAME batch - parallel execution)

DO NOT modify the prompt. DO NOT add context. Raw user words only.

Step 3: Agents Work Independently

Each agent will:
1. Read and understand the user's request
2. Explore the codebase using their tools (Read, Grep, Glob, LS)
3. Identify the root cause
4. Reason through solutions (chain-of-thought)
5. Generate a complete fix

Each agent works in complete isolation - they cannot see what other agents are doing or have found.

Step 4: Track Progress & Collect Solutions

As agents complete, show progress to the user:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                     AGENT PROGRESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
☑ Agent 1 - Complete
☑ Agent 2 - Complete  
☑ Agent 3 - Complete
☐ Agent 4 - Working...
☐ Agent 5 - Working...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Update this display as each agent finishes. When all complete:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                     AGENT PROGRESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
☑ Agent 1 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 2 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 3 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 4 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 5 - Complete ✓

All agents finished! Analyzing solutions...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Collect all outputs for voting.

Step 5: Majority Voting

Group solutions by their core approach/answer:

  1. Identify the key decision in each solution
  2. Group solutions that make the same key decision
  3. Count how many agents chose each approach

Voting rules:
- Clear majority (≥50%): Select that solution, HIGH confidence
- Plurality (highest < 50%): Select that solution, MEDIUM confidence
- No clear winner: Analyze disagreement, LOW confidence

Step 6: Implement the Winner

Implement the majority solution. Do NOT synthesize or merge - use the winning answer as-is.

Step 7: Report Results

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                    DEBUG COUNCIL RESULTS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 📊 Voting Summary

| Approach | Description | Agents | Votes |
|----------|-------------|--------|-------|
| ✅ A | [description] | 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 | **5/7** |
| B | [description] | 3, 6 | 2/7 |

**Winner: Approach A** (71% consensus)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🔍 What Each Agent Found

### Agent 1
- Files explored: [list]
- Root cause identified: [summary]
- Solution: [brief]

### Agent 2
- Files explored: [list]
- Root cause identified: [summary]
- Solution: [brief]

... (for each agent)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🧠 Reasoning Highlights

### Why majority chose Approach A:
- Agent 1: "[key insight]"
- Agent 2: "[key insight]"
- Agent 4: "[key insight]"

### Why minority chose differently:
- Agent 3: "[different perspective]"

### Valuable minority insight:
[Any good ideas from minority that might be worth noting]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 📈 Confidence: HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW

[Explanation based on voting distribution and reasoning quality]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## ✅ Selected Solution

[The complete winning solution]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🔧 Implementation

[The actual code change being made]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Configuration

Mode Agents Use Case
debug council of 3 3 Faster, still reliable
debug council of 5 5 Good balance
debug council of 7 7 High confidence
debug council of 10 10 Maximum confidence

If user just says debug council, ask them to choose.


Research Basis

Based on "Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models" (Wang et al., 2022):

Principle Our Implementation
Same prompt to all Raw user prompt, unmodified
Independent samples Each agent explores independently
No shared context No orchestrator pre-processing
Chain-of-thought Agents use ultrathink
Majority voting Count approaches, select majority

Why This is Slower (And Why That's OK)

Each agent independently:
- Explores the codebase
- Reads relevant files
- Reasons through the problem
- Generates a solution

This takes 3-10x longer than shared-context approaches, but provides:
- True independence - no orchestrator bias
- Diverse exploration - agents may find different things
- Research alignment - matches the paper exactly
- Maximum reliability - for when accuracy matters most

Use this for critical problems where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.


Agents

10 identical debug solver agents in agents/ directory:
- debug-solver-1 through debug-solver-10

All agents:
- Same instructions
- Same temperature (0.7)
- Same tools (Read, Grep, Glob, LS)
- Use ultrathink (extended thinking)
- Focus on finding the ONE correct answer

Diversity comes from sampling randomness and independent exploration, not different prompts.

# Supported AI Coding Agents

This skill is compatible with the SKILL.md standard and works with all major AI coding agents:

Learn more about the SKILL.md standard and how to use these skills with your preferred AI coding agent.