An apparatus for core repair includes a failure analysis and recovery (“FAR”) probe that accesses a core of a processor and units of the core over a low-level communication bus while the core is operational after a failure notification. The FAR probe compares operational data of the core versus vital product data (“VPD”) while the core is running tests and a thermal, power, functional (“TPF”) workload to determine if the core is in a degraded state and runs tests to identify a failure after determining that the core is in a degraded state. The FAR probe adjusts parameters of the core in response to identifying a failure of the core and re-evaluates the core to determine if the core is functional. The FAR probe returns the core to service after determining that the core is functional. The FAR probe operates independent of other processor cores while the cores are operational.