Deep Dive

Overview

Deep Dive orchestrates a 2-stage pipeline that first investigates WHY something happened (trace) then precisely defines WHAT to do about it (deep-interview). The trace stage runs 3 parallel causal investigation lanes, and its findings feed into the interview stage via a 3-point injection mechanism.

The result is a crystal-clear spec grounded in evidence, not assumptions.

Usage

/oh-my-claudecode:deep-dive "why does the auth token expire early?"

Also activated via magic keywords.

deep dive into the authentication failures
investigate deeply why the DAG fails intermittently

When to Use

• User has a problem but doesn't know the root cause — needs investigation before requirements
• Bug investigation: "Something broke and I need to figure out why, then plan the fix"
• Feature exploration: "I want to improve X but first need to understand how it currently works"
• The problem is ambiguous, causal, and evidence-heavy

When NOT to Use

• User already knows the root cause — use /deep-interview directly
• User has a clear, specific request with file paths — execute directly
• User wants to trace only without requirements — use /trace directly
• User already has a PRD or spec — use /ralph or /autopilot

Pipeline Stages

Stage 1: Deep Dive               Stage 2: Ralplan                Stage 3: Autopilot
┌─────────────────────┐    ┌───────────────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────────┐
│ Trace (3 lanes)     │    │ Planner creates plan      │    │ Phase 2: Execution   │
│ Interview (Socratic)│───>│ Architect reviews         │───>│ Phase 3: QA cycling  │
│ 3-point injection   │    │ Critic validates          │    │ Phase 4: Validation  │
│ Spec crystallization│    │ Loop until consensus      │    │ Phase 5: Cleanup     │
│ Gate: ≤20% ambiguity│    │ ADR + RALPLAN-DR summary  │    │                      │
└─────────────────────┘    └───────────────────────────┘    └──────────────────────┘
Output: spec.md            Output: consensus-plan.md        Output: working code

Execution Phases

Phase 1: Initialize

Parses the user's input, detects brownfield vs greenfield, and generates 3 trace lane hypotheses:

1. Code-path / implementation cause
2. Config / environment / orchestration cause
3. Measurement / artifact / assumption mismatch cause — covers verification-method defects, not just system defects. If the problem says "X is empty but Y is not", "N streams differ", or "values mismatch across entities", this lane runs a premise audit first: enumerate entity dimensions (cohort IDs, tenant IDs, partition keys, dimensional keys per stream) via metadata table or schema introspection before treating zero-row or mismatch results as evidence of a system defect.

Phase 1.5: Pre-flight Workflow Setup

Loads runtime settings before execution:

• Reads [$CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR|~/.claude]/settings.json and ./.claude/settings.json (project overrides user)
• Resolves omc.deepInterview.ambiguityThreshold (default 0.2) so the later interview gate uses the project-configured value instead of a hard-coded threshold

Phase 2: Lane Confirmation

Presents the 3 hypotheses to the user for confirmation (1 round only).

Phase 3: Trace Execution

Runs 3 parallel tracer lanes using Claude built-in team mode. Each lane:

• Owns exactly one hypothesis
• Gathers evidence for and against
• Names the critical unknown
• Recommends the best discriminating probe

For Lane 3 (Misplacement / SoT violation) findings, every candidate MOVE destination is classified with an ownership_scope:

Cross-boundary MOVE candidates (for example personal-config → shared-config) are flagged with an explicit warning and must not be surfaced as the default recommendation; same-scope MOVE, COMPRESS, or KEEP is preferred.

A falsification round runs between the leading hypothesis and the strongest alternative.

Phase 4: Interview with Trace Injection

Follows the deep-interview protocol with 3 initialization overrides:

1. initial_idea enrichment: Replaces raw input with trace findings
2. codebase_context replacement: Uses trace synthesis instead of re-exploring
3. initial question queue injection: Per-lane critical unknowns become the first interview questions

The interview continues with Socratic questioning until ambiguity ≤ 20%.

Phase 5: Execution Bridge

Presents execution options:

Trace Output

Trace results are saved to .omc/specs/deep-dive-trace-{slug}.md with:

• Ranked hypotheses with confidence and evidence strength
• Per-lane evidence summaries
• Rebuttal round results
• Most likely explanation
• Critical unknown and recommended discriminating probe

Related Skills

• trace - Investigation only, no requirements
• deep-interview - Requirements only, no investigation
• ralplan - Consensus planning (Stage 2)
• autopilot - Autonomous execution (Stage 3)

Reference