Root Cause Analysis

This walks you through systematic problem solving when things break in production. It's built around the 5 Whys technique and includes a structured RCA process with templates for incident reports. You get concrete examples like tracing a 503 error back through database connection pools to missing indexes to inadequate load testing environments. The skill covers when to do an RCA (production incidents, recurring problems, performance issues) and includes follow-up guides for prevention. Honestly most valuable for teams that keep fighting the same fires instead of fixing the underlying issues. The templates help you actually document what went wrong instead of just scrambling to restore service and moving on.

skills.sh installs: 916
GitHub stars: 379
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts --skill root-cause-analysis --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

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Overview

Root cause analysis (RCA) identifies underlying reasons for failures, enabling permanent solutions rather than temporary fixes.

When to Use

Production incidents
Customer-impacting issues
Repeated problems
Unexpected failures
Performance degradation

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

Example: Website Down

Symptom: Website returned 503 Service Unavailable

Why 1: Why was website down?
  Answer: Database connection pool exhausted

Why 2: Why was connection pool exhausted?
  Answer: Queries taking too long, connections not released

Why 3: Why were queries slow?
  Answer: Missing index on frequently queried column

Why 4: Why was index missing?
  Answer: Performance testing didn't use production-like data volume

Why 5: Why wasn't production-like data used?
  Answer: Load testing environment doesn't mirror production

Root Cause: Load testing environment under-provisioned

SKILL.md on GitHub