rcalisted

# RCA Skill The diagnostic counterpart to forward planning. When a failure gets past a test, a gate, or review, write a root-cause analysis to the canonical template. The goal is never who, it is: what guardrail was missing and why the mistake was easy to make. ## Before writing Read `references/rca-template.md`. It is the canonical structure and the exact contract the lint enforces. Do not improvise a different shape. ## When to write an RCA - A defect shipped and a human or a gate caught it after the fact. - A run came back BLOCKED, or a deliverable failed validation. - A bug recurs after a prior fix (the prior fix treated a symptom). - The user says "rca this", "root cause this", "postmortem this", "why did this break". A trivial bug you fix in the same breath, that never escaped a gate, does not need an RCA. A failure that got past a test, a gate, or review does. ## Where RCAs land `q-system/output/rca/rca-<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md` inside a kipi instance, or `rca/rca-<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md` in a plain repo. The lint fires on any file named `rca-*.md` / `premortem-*.md` or any doc whose H1 starts with `# RCA:` or `# Premortem`. ## The rules the lint enforces 1. **Surface vs structural root cause.** Surface is the trigger (what fired). Structural is the latent systemic cause (why it was allowed and went uncaught). 2. **Multi-factor.** Use `### Root cause #1`, `### Root cause #2` when more than one structural cause contributed. Resist a single tidy cause. 3. **