Verdict
A four-phase root-cause process that treats symptom fixes as failures. It forces the agent to reproduce, isolate, understand, and only then change code, which is exactly the discipline most agents skip when they start guessing at a fix.
Best for
Regressions, intermittent failures, performance anomalies, and unfamiliar systems where the cause has not been demonstrated.
Keep in mind
It is slower than a direct fix for obvious defects and still needs a reproducible signal; without one the process can stall instead of converging.
Example task
Find the root cause of intermittent webhook timeouts without editing production code until the failing path is isolated.