Troubleshooting Application Failures

When your app is breaking and you need to figure out why, this skill digs through CloudWatch logs to find the problem. It discovers relevant log groups, searches for error patterns and stack traces, then does root cause analysis to give you prioritized fixes. The workflow is structured, which is helpful when you're under pressure and need a systematic approach rather than grep-ing blindly through logs. You'll need the right IAM permissions for CloudWatch Logs queries, and it handles the common gotchas like query timeouts on massive log groups by breaking things into smaller chunks.

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last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill troubleshooting-application-failures --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Application Failure Troubleshooting

Overview

Domain expertise for diagnosing application failures through CloudWatch log analysis. Discovers relevant log groups, searches for error patterns and stack traces, performs root cause analysis, and generates prioritized remediation recommendations.

Logs are where the investigation starts, not its boundary. When the logs point at a timeout, throttle, retry or permission problem, read the configuration that sets it, for example the API Gateway integration timeout, the queue's visibility timeout, or the function timeout and event source mapping. Read-only access normally includes these Describe and Get calls.

Troubleshoot a failing application

To diagnose and resolve application failures using CloudWatch logs, follow the procedure exactly. See Application failure troubleshooting procedure.

Troubleshooting

No log groups found

Ask the user for specific log group names. Common patterns: /aws/lambda/function-name, /aws/apigateway/api-name, or custom application log groups.