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Bug Triage

Testing & Quality
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Systematically reproduce, diagnose, and analyze bugs to determine root cause, assess severity, and plan fix strategy

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/blob/HEAD/skills/development/bug-triage/SKILL.md

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Bug Triage

Purpose

Systematically analyze bug reports to reproduce issues, identify root causes, assess severity and impact, and determine the appropriate fix strategy and priority.

When to Use

  • Analyzing incoming bug reports
  • Investigating production issues
  • Diagnosing test failures
  • Planning bug fix work
  • Prioritizing bug backlog

Key Capabilities

  1. Bug Reproduction - Create reliable steps to reproduce the issue
  2. Root Cause Analysis - Identify underlying cause, not just symptoms
  3. Severity Assessment - Determine impact and urgency accurately

Approach

  1. Understand the Report - Read bug description and symptoms
  2. Reproduce the Bug - Create minimal reproduction steps
  3. Isolate the Cause - Use logs, debugging, code inspection
  4. Assess Impact - Determine affected users and severity
  5. Determine Fix Strategy - Quick patch vs architectural fix
  6. Document Findings - Clear report for implementation team

Example

Context: Bug report "Users can't log in"

## Bug Analysis

**Symptoms**:
- Users see "Invalid credentials" error
- Occurs only for accounts created after Oct 15
- Works fine for older accounts

**Reproduction Steps**:
1. Create new user account
2. Log out
3. Attempt to log in with correct credentials
4. Observe error message

**Root Cause**:
- Code inspection of auth system
- Found: Password hashing algorithm changed Oct 15
- Old accounts use bcrypt, new accounts use argon2
- Login validation only checks bcrypt

**Location**: `src/auth/validator.py:45-67`

**Impact**:
- Severity: Critical (blocks all new users)
- Affected: ~500 accounts created in last week
- Workaround: None available

**Fix Strategy**:
- Update validator to check both hash types
- Add migration for existing argon2 hashes
- Estimated effort: 2 hours (small fix)
- Testing required: Auth system regression tests

**Priority**: Critical - Fix immediately
**Recommended Agent**: implementer (straightforward code fix)

Best Practices

  • ✅ Always try to reproduce before diagnosing
  • ✅ Check logs and error messages first
  • ✅ Use Grep/Glob to find related code quickly
  • ✅ Document exact reproduction steps
  • ✅ Consider data issues, not just code bugs
  • ✅ Assess severity objectively (not all bugs are critical)
  • ❌ Avoid: Assuming the cause without investigation
  • ❌ Avoid: Treating all bugs as equally urgent