why

Investigate design rationale behind code by querying git history, tickets, docs, chat, and telemetry sources.

1|Updated Sep 13, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/silentFellow/public-dotfiles --skill why-silentfellow
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: why
Source: https://github.com/silentFellow/public-dotfiles/tree/main/agents/skills/why
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/silentFellow/public-dotfiles --skill why-silentfellow

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill includes references (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Code rarely explains why it exists. This Skill answers "why does this code work this way" questions by investigating the historical record—commits, PRs, tickets, design docs, chat threads, and production telemetry—instead of guessing from the code itself. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Parallel Evidence Gathering: Spawns one investigator per evidence category (source control, issue tracker, long-form docs, team chat, observability, error tracking, analytics warehouse), each mapped to an available MCP. - Confidence-Tiered Synthesis: A synthesizer agent classifies every claim as Direct, Supported, Inferred, Speculative, or Unknown, with citations and an explicit "What We Don't Know" section. - Use Case: Ask "why is this API response clamped to 100 items?" and receive a cited answer tracing the threshold to a PR discussion, a customer ticket, or a Datadog monitor—plus an honest note when no evidence exists. ## Quick Start Ask why the retry logic in the payment service was added and have the skill investigate the code's history across all available sources.

Frequently Asked Questions about why

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I find out why a piece of code was written a certain way?▼

Ask a why question about the target code and the skill anchors it to files, symbols, and commits, then spawns parallel investigators across git history, PRs, tickets, docs, chat, and telemetry. A synthesizer returns a cited, confidence-tiered answer.

What sources does a code rationale investigation search?▼

Seven evidence categories: source control history, issue trackers like Linear or Jira, long-form docs like Notion or Confluence, team chat like Slack, infrastructure observability like Datadog, error tracking like Sentry, and analytics warehouses like Databricks.

Does this work without MCP servers configured?▼

Source control investigation via git and gh always works. Other categories require a matching MCP server; missing ones are documented as explicit gaps in the Sources Consulted section rather than silently skipped.

How does it handle questions with no documented answer?▼

It reports an honest Unknown tier, listing exactly what was searched and found empty. Gaps are named concretely so you know whether to ask the original author or abandon the question.

When should I use why versus how for code questions?▼

Use how to understand what code does and its runtime behavior. Use why to uncover the decisions, tradeoffs, incidents, or business constraints that motivated the code's current shape.