Agent skill · product strategy · paperclipai
diagnose-why-work-stopped
Diagnose stalled, looping, or over-recovered Paperclip issue trees and propose a no-code product-rule plan. Use when asked why work stopped, why it looped, or how to prevent a tree from going too deep.
Why this skill is useful
Provides a structured diagnostic procedure and product-rule plan for addressing specific issues in product design that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 7k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 75,771 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Diagnose Why Work Stopped A repeatable procedure for the recurring class of issues where the user (or a manager) points at a stalled / looping / over-recovered issue tree and asks "why did this stop / why is this looping / how do we make sure this doesn't happen again?" This skill is diagnostic + product-design, not engineering. The output is a written root cause and an approved plan. No code changes leave this skill. Canonical execution model: read doc/execution-semantics.md before diagnosing or proposing a new liveness/recovery rule. Use that document as the source of truth for status, action-path, post-run disposition, bounded continuation, productivity review, pause-hold, watchdog, and explicit recovery semantics. If the investigation finds a true product-rule gap, the plan should say whether doc/execution-semantics.md needs a matching update. When to use Trigger on an assignment whose title or body matches any of: "why did this work stop", "why did this stall", "why did this just stop" "infinite loop", "looping", "spinning", "going too deep", "recovery went too deep" "liveness — what happened here", "this tree stopped working", "stuck" "approach it from a product perspective", "general product principle / rule" An attached link to a specific stalled / looping / over-recovered issue tree Also use when the user asks for forensics, root cause, or a write-up before any product change. When NOT to use The assignment asks you to ship a code change directly. Use normal engineering flow. The assignment is a normal bug report against a specific feature. Use normal investigation. You are the original implementer being asked to fix your own bug. Use normal debugging. Three invariants you must preserve Every diagnosis and every proposed rule must hold these three invariants together. The user has restated them on at least four issues; treat them as load-bearing: 1. Productive work continues. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills paperclipai/diagnose-why-work-stopped