drill-five-whys

SkillDev tools

Lets your agent find root causes by repeatedly asking why and checking each step against evidence.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Add ahel to your AI once: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code or Codex. Then ask it to use this.

Then ask your AI: use the drill-five-whys skill

About this skill

Iteratively ask why, evidence-checking each causal step, to move from symptom toward root cause.

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine in skills/drill-five-whys/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Purpose

Iteratively ask why, checking evidence at each causal step, to move from symptom toward root cause.

Input contract

required: [symptom_statement, causal_evidence]
optional: [initial_cause, max_depth]
constraints: [each why answer must explain the preceding statement and cite evidence or uncertainty]

Procedure

  1. Normalize the symptom as an observable effect.
  2. Ask why the effect occurs and record the proposed cause.
  3. Test the cause against evidence before asking the next why.
  4. Stop at a controllable root, an evidence boundary, or a documented unresolved branch.

Output contract

produces: [why_chain, root_cause_candidate, evidence_gaps]
delta_fields: [findings, assumption_updates, uncertainties]

Quality gates

  • Each link is directional and evidence-checked; stopping reason is explicit.

Failure and counterexamples

Do not force exactly five levels or accept circular answers as root causes.

Provenance map

  • deep-insight/five-whys-drilling: resolved.

Signals

GitHub stars
501
Forks
41
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Key
drill-five-whys
Source
github.com/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine