Pull Request Checklist

• I have read and followed the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines.
• I have read and followed the Guidance for submissions involving paid services.
• My contribution adds a new instruction, prompt, agent, skill, workflow, or canvas extension file in the correct directory.
• The file follows the required naming convention.
• The content is clearly structured and follows the example format.
• I have tested my instructions, prompt, agent, skill, workflow, or canvas extension with GitHub Copilot.
• I have run npm start and verified that README.md is up to date.
• I am targeting the main branch for this pull request.

Description

Adds the read-the-logs-first skill: a debugging-discipline skill that forces the agent to read the full error, log, or stack trace, quote the failing line verbatim, and open the failing frame before it changes any code.

It targets the "fix first, read later" failure mode — upgrading a dependency, rewriting a function, or editing several files before anyone has opened the frame the trace points at. Ten rules cover reading the whole trace, quoting it verbatim, opening the frame, separating error from symptom, attaching evidence to every hypothesis, one change at a time, re-running the exact reproducing command, asking for missing logs instead of guessing, no speculative tooling, and stopping after two failed fixes. It also fixes the output shape (Failure / Frame / Cause / Fix / Verify) so a bug report is auditable rather than a claim.

Skill folder: skills/read-the-logs-first/

• SKILL.md — the rules (no bundled assets, so the table row shows None).

Local verification (Node v24.15.0, npm ci from package-lock.json):

npm run skill:validate  ->  ✅ All 436 skills are valid / 🎉 Skill validation passed
npm start               ->  ✅ Successfully generated marketplace.json with 182 plugins (104 local, 78 external)
git status              ->  only skills/read-the-logs-first/ and docs/README.skills.md
npx @microsoft/vally-cli lint skills/read-the-logs-first --verbose  ->  1 skill(s) linted, 1 passed (spec-compliance, valid-refs)

Files changed: skills/read-the-logs-first/SKILL.md (new) and docs/README.skills.md (regenerated by npm start). No existing resource was modified.

Type of Contribution

• New instruction file.
• New prompt file.
• New agent file.
• New plugin.
• New skill file.
• New agentic workflow.
• New canvas extension.
• Update to existing instruction, prompt, agent, plugin, skill, workflow, or canvas extension.
• Other (please specify):

Additional Notes

Disclosure: This is my own project (hansei996) — https://github.com/hansei996/read-the-logs-first (MIT). The skill text here is byte-identical to the upstream skills/read-the-logs-first/SKILL.md; only the vendored copy is added in this PR.

By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution abides by the Code of Conduct and will be licensed under the MIT License.