Investigate Skill
Version: 1.0.0 Purpose: Keyword-based routing to specialized detective skills Pattern: Smart delegation via Task tool
Overview
This skill analyzes your investigation query and routes to the appropriate detective specialist:
- debugger-detective (errors, bugs, crashes)
- tester-detective (tests, coverage, edge cases)
- architect-detective (architecture, design, patterns)
- developer-detective (implementation, data flow - default)
Routing Logic
Priority System (Highest First)
-
Error/Debug (Priority 1) - Time-critical bug fixes
- Keywords: "debug", "error", "broken", "failing", "crash"
- Route to:
debugger-detective
-
Testing (Priority 2) - Specialized test analysis
- Keywords: "test", "coverage", "edge case", "mock"
- Route to:
tester-detective
-
Architecture (Priority 3) - High-level understanding
- Keywords: "architecture", "design", "structure", "layer"
- Route to:
architect-detective
-
Implementation (Default, Priority 4) - Most common
- Keywords: "implementation", "how does", "code flow"
- Route to:
developer-detective
Conflict Resolution
When multiple keywords from different categories are detected:
- Highest priority wins (Priority 1 beats Priority 2, etc.)
- No matches: Default to developer-detective
Workflow
Phase 1: Extract Query
The investigation query should be available from the task description or user input.
# Query comes from the Task description or user request
INVESTIGATION_QUERY="${TASK_DESCRIPTION:-$USER_QUERY}"
# Normalize to lowercase for case-insensitive matching
QUERY_LOWER=$(echo "$INVESTIGATION_QUERY" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
Phase 2: Keyword Detection
# Priority 1: Error/Debug keywords
if echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "debug|error|broken|failing|crash"; then
DETECTIVE="debugger-detective"
KEYWORDS="debug/error keywords"
PRIORITY=1
RATIONALE="Bug fixes are time-critical and require call chain tracing"
# Priority 2: Testing keywords
elif echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "test|coverage|edge case|mock"; then
DETECTIVE="tester-detective"
KEYWORDS="test/coverage keywords"
PRIORITY=2
RATIONALE="Test analysis is specialized and requires callers analysis"
# Priority 3: Architecture keywords
elif echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "architecture|design|structure|layer"; then
DETECTIVE="architect-detective"
KEYWORDS="architecture/design keywords"
PRIORITY=3
RATIONALE="High-level understanding requires PageRank analysis"
# Priority 4: Implementation (default)
else
DETECTIVE="developer-detective"
KEYWORDS="implementation (default)"
PRIORITY=4
RATIONALE="Most common investigation type - data flow via callers/callees"
fi
Phase 3: User Feedback
Before delegating, inform the user of the routing decision:
echo ""
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo "🔍 Investigation Routing"
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo ""
echo "Query: $INVESTIGATION_QUERY"
echo ""
echo "Detected: $KEYWORDS (Priority $PRIORITY)"
echo "Routing to: $DETECTIVE"
echo "Reason: $RATIONALE"
echo ""
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo ""
Phase 4: Delegation via Task Tool
Use the Task tool to delegate to the selected detective:
Task({
description: INVESTIGATION_QUERY,
agent: DETECTIVE,
context: {
routing_reason: `Auto-routed based on ${KEYWORDS}`,
original_query: INVESTIGATION_QUERY,
priority: PRIORITY
}
})
Examples
Example 1: Debug Keywords
Input: "Why is login broken?"
Detection:
- Keyword matched: "broken"
- Priority: 1 (Error/Debug)
- Route to: debugger-detective
Feedback:
🔍 Investigation Routing
Query: Why is login broken?
Detected: debug/error keywords (Priority 1)
Routing to: debugger-detective
Reason: Bug fixes are time-critical and require call chain tracing
Example 2: Test Keywords
Input: "What's the test coverage for payment?"
Detection:
- Keywords matched: "test", "coverage"
- Priority: 2 (Testing)
- Route to: tester-detective
Feedback:
🔍 Investigation Routing
Query: What's the test coverage for payment?
Detected: test/coverage keywords (Priority 2)
Routing to: tester-detective
Reason: Test analysis is specialized and requires callers analysis
Example 3: Architecture Keywords
Input: "What's the architecture of the auth layer?"
Detection:
- Keywords matched: "architecture", "layer"
- Priority: 3 (Architecture)
- Route to: architect-detective
Feedback:
🔍 Investigation Routing
Query: What's the architecture of the auth layer?
Detected: architecture/design keywords (Priority 3)
Routing to: architect-detective
Reason: High-level understanding requires PageRank analysis
Example 4: No Keywords (Default)
Input: "How does payment work?"
Detection:
- No keywords matched
- Priority: 4 (Default)
- Route to: developer-detective
Feedback:
🔍 Investigation Routing
Query: How does payment work?
Detected: implementation (default) (Priority 4)
Routing to: developer-detective
Reason: Most common investigation type - data flow via callers/callees
Example 5: Multi-Keyword Conflict
Input: "Debug the test coverage"
Detection:
- Keywords matched: "debug" (Priority 1) AND "test" (Priority 2)
- Priority 1 wins
- Route to: debugger-detective
Feedback:
🔍 Investigation Routing
Query: Debug the test coverage
Detected: debug/error keywords (Priority 1)
Routing to: debugger-detective
Reason: Bug fixes are time-critical and require call chain tracing
(Note: Also detected test keywords, but debug takes priority)
Complete Implementation
Here's the full workflow:
#!/bin/bash
# Get investigation query from task description
INVESTIGATION_QUERY="${TASK_DESCRIPTION}"
# Normalize to lowercase
QUERY_LOWER=$(echo "$INVESTIGATION_QUERY" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
# Keyword detection with priority routing
if echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "debug|error|broken|failing|crash"; then
DETECTIVE="debugger-detective"
KEYWORDS="debug/error keywords"
PRIORITY=1
RATIONALE="Bug fixes are time-critical and require call chain tracing"
elif echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "test|coverage|edge case|mock"; then
DETECTIVE="tester-detective"
KEYWORDS="test/coverage keywords"
PRIORITY=2
RATIONALE="Test analysis is specialized and requires callers analysis"
elif echo "$QUERY_LOWER" | grep -qE "architecture|design|structure|layer"; then
DETECTIVE="architect-detective"
KEYWORDS="architecture/design keywords"
PRIORITY=3
RATIONALE="High-level understanding requires PageRank analysis"
else
DETECTIVE="developer-detective"
KEYWORDS="implementation (default)"
PRIORITY=4
RATIONALE="Most common investigation type - data flow via callers/callees"
fi
# Show routing decision
echo ""
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo "🔍 Investigation Routing"
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo ""
echo "Query: $INVESTIGATION_QUERY"
echo ""
echo "Detected: $KEYWORDS (Priority $PRIORITY)"
echo "Routing to: $DETECTIVE"
echo "Reason: $RATIONALE"
echo ""
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo ""
Then use the Task tool to delegate:
Task({
description: INVESTIGATION_QUERY,
agent: DETECTIVE
})
Fallback Protocol
If routing produces unexpected results:
- Show routing decision to user
- Ask for override if needed via AskUserQuestion
- Default to developer-detective if ambiguous
Override Pattern
// If user wants to override the routing
AskUserQuestion({
questions: [{
question: `Auto-routing selected ${DETECTIVE}. Override?`,
header: "Investigation Routing",
multiSelect: false,
options: [
{ label: "Continue with auto-routing", description: `Use ${DETECTIVE}` },
{ label: "debugger-detective", description: "Root cause analysis" },
{ label: "tester-detective", description: "Test coverage analysis" },
{ label: "architect-detective", description: "Architecture patterns" },
{ label: "developer-detective", description: "Implementation details" }
]
}]
})
Integration with Existing Workflow
This skill is additive only and does not change existing behavior:
- Direct detective usage still works (Task → specific detective)
- /analyze command unchanged (launches codebase-detective)
- Parallel orchestration patterns unchanged
- All claudemem hooks preserved
Use Cases
| When to Use Investigate Skill | When to Use Direct Detective | |-------------------------------|------------------------------| | Investigation type unclear | You know which specialist you need | | General exploration | Parallel orchestration (multimodel plugin) | | Quick routing decision | Specific workflow requirements | | Learning/experimenting | Production automation |
Notes
- Case-insensitive keyword matching
- Priority system resolves conflicts
- User sees routing decision before delegation
- Original query preserved in Task context
- Default to developer-detective when no keywords match
- Works with all claudemem versions (v0.3.0+)
Maintained by: MadAppGang Plugin: code-analysis v3.1.0 Last Updated: January 2026 (v1.0.0 - Initial release)