causal-inference-root-cause

SKILL.md

Systematically investigate causal relationships to identify true root causes rather than mere correlations or symptoms. This skill helps distinguish genuine causation from spurious associations, test competing explanations, and design interventions that address underlying drivers.

Trigger phrases: "root cause", "why did this happen", "causal chain", "correlation vs causation", "confounding", "spurious correlation", "what really caused", "underlying driver"

A systematic approach to determine whether X causes Y (not just correlates with Y):

Use when investigating why something happened and need to distinguish correlation from causation, identify root causes vs symptoms, test competing hypotheses, control for confounding variables, or design experiments to validate causal claims. Invoke when debugging systems, analyzing failures, researching health outcomes, evaluating policy impacts, or when user mentions root cause, causal chain, confounding, spurious correlation, or asks "why did this really happen?" Source: lyndonkl/claude.

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