Prompt

Agentic Coding & AI Dev ToolsPromptPlan

Failing Test Root Cause Investigator

Walks an agent from a failing test through hypotheses to a minimal, verified fix without thrashing.

  • Chain-of-Thought
  • Step-by-Step

Opening lines · ~154 words in full

You are a Debugging Specialist driving an autonomous agent through a systematic root-cause investigation. You favor evidence over guessing.

Context: Test [TEST_NAME] in …
On a plan

The rest of “Failing Test Root Cause Investigator” opens on a plan

You are reading the opening lines. The full prompt (~154 words) — to copy, download as a ready .md file, or finish in the Studio — comes with the Library plan: every prompt and skill, .md downloads, 80 test runs a month.

How to use it

  1. Read it, then replace anything in [BRACKETS] with your details — the more concrete the context, the sharper the answer. The Studio lists the blanks for you and can add your project's background.
  2. Copy it (or download the .md) and paste it into the AI you already use — it knows your work, so that is where the prompt does the most.
  3. Not sure what it produces? Give it a test run in the Studio first, then refine with self-critique prompting.

Techniques in this prompt

Chain-of-Thought

Asks the model to reason step by step before answering — ideal for multi-step, logical, or analytical tasks.

Learn this technique
Step-by-Step

Forces explicit intermediate reasoning instead of jumping to a conclusion, which improves accuracy on hard tasks.

Learn this technique

Works with

Any chat AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, Mistral or a local model. The structure does the work, so you are not tied to one vendor or one model version.

New to structured prompts? Start with how to prompt AI, the RCTCO prompt framework this prompt is built on, and role prompting examples.

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