debug-council

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.

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Install skill "debug-council" with this command: npx skills add michaelboeding/skills/michaelboeding-skills-debug-council

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

ModeAgentsUse Case
debug council of 33Faster, still reliable
debug council of 55Good balance
debug council of 77High confidence
debug council of 1010Maximum 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):

PrincipleOur Implementation
Same prompt to allRaw user prompt, unmodified
Independent samplesEach agent explores independently
No shared contextNo orchestrator pre-processing
Chain-of-thoughtAgents use ultrathink
Majority votingCount 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.

Source Transparency

This detail page is rendered from real SKILL.md content. Trust labels are metadata-based hints, not a safety guarantee.

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