Gdb

Walks Claude through interactive GDB sessions from basic breakpoints to reverse debugging and remote gdbserver workflows. Covers the essentials like stepping, inspecting variables, and multi-threaded debugging, plus less common terrain like Intel Processor Trace replay and conditional watchpoints. The command tables are dense enough to be reference material. Most useful when you're debugging a segfault or trying to diagnose a race condition and need Claude to suggest the right GDB invocations instead of generic advice. The prerequisite section on compiling with debug symbols will save you from the usual "no symbol table" frustration.

skills.sh installs: 1K
GitHub stars: 279
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill gdb --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

GDB

Purpose

Walk agents through GDB sessions from first launch to advanced workflows: crash diagnosis, reverse debugging, remote debugging, and multi-thread inspection.

Triggers

"My program segfaults / crashes — how do I debug it?"
"How do I set a breakpoint on condition X?"
"How do I inspect memory / variables in GDB?"
"How do I debug a remote embedded target?"
"GDB shows ?? frames / no source"
"How do I replay a bug deterministically?" (record/replay)

Workflow

1. Prerequisite: compile with debug info

Always compile with -g (GCC/Clang). Use -Og or -O0 for most debuggable code.

gcc -g -Og -o prog main.c

For release builds: use -g -O2 and keep the binary with symbols (strip separately with objcopy).

2. Start GDB

gdb ./prog                          # load binary
gdb ./prog core                     # load with core dump
gdb -p 12345                        # attach to running process
gdb --args ./prog arg1 arg2         # pass arguments
gdb -batch -ex 'run' -ex 'bt' ./prog  # non-interactive (CI)