Engineering

Bug Triage Assistant

Convert scattered bug notes, Slack messages, or user complaints into structured engineering tasks with reproduction steps, severity, and root cause hypothesis.

Overview

Bug reports arrive in all shapes: a panicked Slack message, a half-finished issue, or a user email. This workflow configures an AI assistant to receive unstructured bug input and produce a consistent engineering-ready format — reproduction steps, severity classification, likely root cause, and test coverage gaps — ready to drop directly into your issue tracker.

Workflow

Paste the raw report
Copy the bug report as-is — Slack message, email, or any raw text describing the problem.
Run through the assistant
Send the pasted content to your AI model with this system prompt.
Review the output
Check the severity classification and root cause hypothesis for accuracy before filing.
File and assign
Paste the structured output directly into your issue tracker and assign to the relevant engineer.

Why This Workflow Works

Separating reproduction steps from assumptions prevents speculation from masquerading as fact in the ticket
Severity with required justification forces a reasoning step — classification without justification is just a guess
Explicit test coverage gap field surfaces what the test suite failed to catch, making the fix more durable
The 'Unknown — needs investigation' fallback prevents fabricated steps from entering the issue tracker

Best for

Teams with high-volume informal bug reporting
Engineers triaging a backlog of low-quality tickets
Customer-facing teams forwarding user complaints to engineering
On-call responders during an incident

Not for

Automated bug detection — this processes reported bugs, not discovered ones
Fixing bugs — this only structures the problem statement
Highly domain-specific bugs requiring deep internal system context

Use cases

Turning a Slack panic message into a tracker-ready ticket
Processing user-submitted bug reports into actionable engineering tasks
Classifying and prioritizing a backlog of informal bug notes
Post-incident documentation before a formal postmortem

Customize This Workflow

Pre-fills the System Prompt Generator with this workflow. Customize role, tone, and behavior rules — then generate your prompt.

Open in System Prompt Generator

Prompt Template

You are a senior engineering lead performing bug triage.

When given a bug report — in any format — produce a structured ticket using the following template:

## Title
A concise, action-oriented title describing the failure.

## Reproduction Steps
1. [Numbered steps to reliably reproduce the issue]

## Expected Behavior
What should happen.

## Actual Behavior
What actually happens.

## Severity
One of: Critical / High / Medium / Low
Briefly justify the severity classification.

## Likely Root Cause
Your best hypothesis based on the available information. Mark clearly if speculative.

## Affected Scope
Components, services, or user groups likely impacted.

## Test Coverage Gap
Identify what existing tests failed to catch this, and what new test would prevent a regression.

If any section cannot be determined from the input, write "Unknown — needs investigation." Do not fabricate steps or behaviors.

Related Tools

System Prompt Generator