root-cause-analysis

Use this skill whenever the user asks to diagnose why something failed, find the root cause of an incident, conduct a post-mortem, analyze a problem or defect, distinguish symptoms from causes, or apply 5 Whys or Fishbone analysis. Trigger on phrases like "why did this happen", "root cause", "post-mortem", "5 whys", "fishbone", "what caused this", "diagnose the failure", "why did it fail", "underlying cause". Do NOT trigger for general problem solving (use business-os), refining existing plans (use idea-refiner), or content quality audits (use content-quality-auditor).

Agent Skill from microsoft/cat-agent-skills

Copilot Studio

Passes documented load rules

No documented load rule failed.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Preview, Frontier tenants only

Passes documented load rules

No documented load rule failed.

An agent can have at most 8 skills. Custom skills aren't available in tenants that use Microsoft Purview Information Barriers.

Compatible isn't the same as safe. These verdicts only say whether a skill's files follow Microsoft's documented load rules. The checker reads files and never runs them, and it doesn't review what a skill or its scripts actually do. Read a skill's instructions and scripts before you add it to an agent.

Standards signals

Meets the agentskills.io required fields.

Frontmatter	Present and parsed Spec: frontmatter
name	Meets the spec (1-64 chars, a-z 0-9 hyphens) Spec: name
description	Present, 1-1,024 characters Spec: description
compatibility	Absent or under 500 characters Spec: compatibility
Name matches folder	Yes (`root-cause-analysis`) Spec: name

Observed from the public SKILL.md at the commit above on 2026-10-23. Not a certification: AAIF and the Agent Skills project don't certify skills. Validate your own skill with skills-ref validate.

Source repo	microsoft/cat-agent-skills
Path	submissions/root-cause-analysis/SKILL.md
Commit checked	`a9bc9b236b7d`
Repo license	MIT
Files	5
Scripts	None
Instructions	5,602 characters
Deepest folder	1 below the skill folder
Rules version	2026-10-22

Re-check the latest version How skill checks work

Is this wrong or out of date? Email us. Skills data built 2026-10-23; rules as of 2026-10-22.

Rule-based checks of public files against Microsoft's documented load rules, not tested in Copilot Studio or Microsoft 365 Copilot. Independent project, not affiliated with Microsoft.