root-cause-tracinglisted

# Root Cause Tracing ## Purpose Find the cause behind a symptom. ## When to Use Use when a failure repeats, appears indirect, or has multiple possible causes. ## Inputs Reproduction steps, logs, changed files, dependency boundaries. ## Steps 1. Reproduce or isolate the symptom. 2. Trace backward to the first bad point. 3. Test one hypothesis at a time. 4. Confirm the fix addresses the cause. ## Gates The explanation accounts for the observed symptom and the chosen fix. ## Evidence Repro notes, hypothesis checks, and before/after behavior. ## Anti-Patterns Treating downstream error messages as the root cause. ## Related `failure-triage`, `systematic-debugging`