Reasoning Skill

Structured reasoning frameworks with mandatory documentation lookup for systematic problem solving.

Overview

This skill wraps two complementary capabilities:

1. Complex Reasoning (complex-reasoning.md) — Multiple reasoning frameworks (Chain-of-Thought, Tree-of-Thought, Hypothesis-Driven Debugging, Root Cause Analysis) that always query documentation before reasoning and store insights in memory.

2. Documentation Lookup (documentation-lookup.md) — Systematic documentation retrieval using Context7 MCP to ground all decisions in accurate, version-specific library documentation.

When to Use

• Debugging complex issues where root cause is unclear → use Hypothesis-Driven Debugging
• Making architectural decisions with multiple valid approaches → use Tree-of-Thought
• Linear problem-solving with sequential steps → use Chain-of-Thought
• Systemic incidents or repeated failures → use Root Cause Analysis
• Any task involving external libraries or APIs → use Documentation Lookup first

Framework Selection

Problem Type	Framework	Agent
Linear, sequential	Chain-of-Thought	hypothesis-debugger
Multiple valid approaches	Tree-of-Thought	requirements-analyzer
Complex bug, unclear root cause	Hypothesis-Driven Debugging	hypothesis-debugger
Incident, systemic issue	Root Cause Analysis	root-cause-analyzer
Any technology decision	Documentation Lookup	requirements-analyzer

Core Protocol

MANDATORY before any reasoning about technology:

1. Identify technologies involved in the task
2. Resolve library IDs via Context7 MCP
3. Query relevant documentation
4. Ground all reasoning steps in retrieved documentation

See complex-reasoning.md for full reasoning framework details. See documentation-lookup.md for documentation retrieval protocol.

Integration

Works with: hypothesis-debugger (debugging workflows), root-cause-analyzer (incident analysis), requirements-analyzer (architecture decisions), task-enricher (technical planning).