Etherscan Transaction Debugger

The Etherscan Transaction Debugger is an agent skill that explains what a transaction actually did. Give it a transaction hash and it reconstructs the supported execution path from live Etherscan data, decodes the calls and events, reconciles the asset and permission changes, and pins down any failure, with direct Etherscan links so you can verify every claim yourself. It works on one transaction, or two for a side-by-side comparison. For following funds across many hops or profiling an address, it hands off to Etherscan Flow. For a full contract audit, it is out of scope.

Get started

Install the skill

Claude Code CLI / Codex CLI
Claude Desktop

Add the skill with the skills.sh CLI. -g installs it globally (user-level, so it is available in every project) and -a '*' installs it for every agent you have set up (Claude Code, Codex, and others):

npx skills add https://github.com/etherscan/skills --skill etherscan-transaction-debugger -g -a '*' -y

Or clone the repo and move the folder into your agent’s skills directory, ~/.claude/skills/ or ~/.codex/skills/:

git clone https://github.com/etherscan/skills.git etherscan-skills
cp -r etherscan-skills/skills/etherscan-transaction-debugger ~/.claude/skills/

Claude Desktop installs a skill from a ZIP you upload. Zip must contain exactly one SKILL.md file.

Download the Etherscan skills repo, unzip it, and compress just the skills-main/skills/etherscan-transaction-debugger folder into etherscan-transaction-debugger.zip.

skills-main/
└── skills/
    ├── etherscan/
    ├── etherscan-contract-review/
    ├── etherscan-flow/
    └── etherscan-transaction-debugger/  ← zip this folder

In Claude Desktop, go to Settings > Skills > Add > Upload a skill and select the etherscan-transaction-debugger.zip file.
The Etherscan Transaction Debugger skill is now ready to be used.

Run your first debug

Paste a transaction hash and ask what happened.

explain what happened in transaction 0x<txhash>. use etherscan-transaction-debugger skill

More prompts to try

why did transaction 0x<txhash> fail?

which contracts and internal calls were involved in 0x<txhash>, and where did the assets move?

was a proxy implementation executed in 0x<txhash>, and which call reverted?

compare 0x<txhash1> and 0x<txhash2> and tell me why they behaved differently

Choose the depth of explanation

Name the audience and the skill sets the level of detail. If you do not, it infers a useful one.

Level	What you get
Simple	A short, non-technical summary of the outcome
Standard	Outcome, the important calls, and asset changes
Developer	Decoded calldata, call semantics, the proxy path, and failure evidence
Support	A customer-ready explanation plus escalation notes
Security	Permissions, callbacks, delegate calls, recipients, and evidence-backed anomalies

What it produces

A report led by a one or two sentence verdict, then only the sections that fit the request: a transaction summary (status, decoded method, value, gas, fees), what happened, the execution flow, the asset and permission changes, a failure analysis when the transaction reverted, evidence-backed security observations, an Explore on Etherscan block of direct links, and a closing note on confidence and what could not be determined. Every claim is tagged by how it is known: observed in the transaction data, derived by calculation from it, or inferred from patterns. Confidence is rated High, Medium, or Low against the evidence.

Good to know

Standard and Deep modes. Standard mode uses Etherscan’s transaction, receipt, internal-transaction, ABI, source, proxy, label, and token data, and answers most cases. Deep mode needs a full execution trace and is used for complete internal calls, DELEGATECALL behavior, or the exact reverting frame. Without a trace, the call tree is partial and the skill says so rather than guessing the reverting frame.
It does not invent. Function names, amounts, revert reasons, proxy relationships, and trace edges come from real data, or are shown as a selector, raw value, or unknown. Etherscan internal transactions are never presented as a complete call trace.

The skill is read-only. It does not generate exploit code, sign or broadcast transactions, or call a contract malicious from unusual behavior alone; it surfaces evidence-backed risk indicators and states the uncertainty.

​Get started

​More prompts to try

​Choose the depth of explanation

​What it produces

​Good to know

Get started

More prompts to try

Choose the depth of explanation

What it produces

Good to know