VMware-Debug

<!-- mcp-name: io.github.vmware-skills/vmware-debug -->

# VMware Debug

> ⚠️ **Work in progress** — the core (event correlation engine, MCP tools, CLI)
> is built and tested; README, `server.json`, full reference docs, and packaging
> polish are still landing. Not yet published to PyPI.

> **Disclaimer**: Community-maintained open-source project, **not affiliated with,
> endorsed by, or sponsored by VMware, Inc. or Broadcom Inc.** "VMware" and
> "vSphere" are trademarks of Broadcom. Source is publicly auditable under the MIT
> license.

The diagnostic brain of the VMware skill family. You bring the symptom (an error,
a log dump, a slow VM); this skill runs a systematic investigation, correlates
events from the other skills into one timeline, ranks root-cause hypotheses, and
tells you what to check next. It is **read-only** — it never changes anything and
never executes fixes. Remediation is routed to `vmware-aiops` (single op) or
`vmware-pilot` (multi-step, gated), mirroring the `vmware-harden → vmware-pilot`
advisor/executor split.

See [`skills/vmware-debug/SKILL.md`](skills/vmware-debug/SKILL.md) for the full
methodology, the event-envelope contract, and symptom routing.

## MCP tools

| Tool | What |
|---|---|
| `incident_timeline` | [READ] Correlate pre-fetched events → timeline + spikes + ranked hypotheses + next-check ideas |
| `list_symptom_categories` | [READ] List recognised symptom categories + what to check for each |

## Offline / Air-Gapped Install (from source)

This project uses the modern PEP 517 build system (hatchling), so there is **no
`setup.py`** by design — that is expected, not a missing file. If you cloned the
source and hit `ERROR: File "setup.py" or "setup.cfg" not found ... editable mode
currently requires a setuptools-based build`, your `pip` is older than 21.3 and
cannot do an *editable* (`-e`) install with a non-setuptools backend. Editable
mode is a developer convenience, not needed to run the tool — do one of:

```bash
# From the source tree — a normal (non-editable) install builds a wheel:
pip install .              # NOT  pip install -e .

# ...or upgrade pip first, and editable works too:
pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -e .
```

For a **truly air-gapped host**, build the wheels on a connected machine and copy
them over — the target then needs no network:

```bash
# On a connected machine, collect this package + its dependencies as wheels:
pip wheel . -w dist        # → dist/*.whl   (or: uv build, for just this package)

# Copy dist/ to the air-gapped host, then install offline:
pip install --no-index --find-links dist vmware-debug
```

## License

MIT.