root-cause-analyzer
Recipe card from the charly-internals plugin (Development — contributor internals).
Root Cause Analyzer
Section titled “Root Cause Analyzer”Overview
Section titled “Overview”The root-cause-analyzer is an enforcer agent at plugins/internals/agents/root-cause-analyzer.md. It is the mandatory first response to any failure, error, warning, or anomaly (R1).
When to Use
Section titled “When to Use”MUST be invoked when ANY of the following occurs:
- A build, test, or deploy command fails unexpectedly
- A warning or error message appears in output
- A check step fails or times out
- A validator reports an anomaly
- Documentation, a skill, or a comment diverges from observed reality
- Any unexpected behavior that cannot be immediately explained
What It Does
Section titled “What It Does”The agent runs an 8-step root cause analysis process:
- Establish expected behavior — what should happen
- Capture actual behavior — what actually happened (with evidence)
- Identify the mechanism — how the system produced the actual behavior
- Find the missed control — what should have prevented it
- Assess blast radius — what else is affected
- Determine root cause — the fundamental issue, not a symptom
- Propose root fix — a fix that prevents recurrence
- Document the finding — record the RCA result
Cross-References
Section titled “Cross-References”/charly-internals:strict-policy— R1 mandate and forbidden-rationalization rules/charly-internals:agents— agent roster and conventions/charly-internals:cutover-policy— how RCA findings feed into cutovers
When to Use This Skill
Section titled “When to Use This Skill”Invoke when you need to understand the root-cause-analyzer agent’s purpose, when it must be invoked, or what its 8-step process covers. The agent itself is at plugins/internals/agents/root-cause-analyzer.md.