--- name: defect-triage-summarizer description: "Transforms raw, unstructured defect notes into a standardized triage summary with severity classification, user impact assessment, reproducibility rating, root-cause hypothesis, and a recommended escalation path with owning team. Use when triaging incoming bug reports, cleaning up messy defect logs, prioritizing a backlog of issues, or preparing a defect for handoff to engineering." argument-hint: "[defect-notes] [product-area]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # Defect Triage Summarizer ## Purpose Convert raw defect notes — screenshots described in words, Slack complaints, half-finished bug reports — into a consistent, decision-ready triage summary that assigns severity, quantifies user impact, rates reproducibility, and routes the issue to the right team. Eliminates the back-and-forth that happens when engineering receives a bug they can't act on. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Triage or summarize a bug report or defect note - Clean up a messy or incomplete defect description - Assign severity or priority to an incoming issue - Decide who a defect should be escalated or routed to - Prepare a bug for handoff to engineering or a product team - Standardize a backlog of loosely-written defect reports ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **Raw defect notes**: The unstructured description, complaint, or bug report as written - **Product area / feature**: Where the defect occurred (e.g., checkout flow, quiz grading, video player) - **Environment**: Where it was observed — production / staging / specific browser / device / OS if known - **User type affected**: Who hit it (end learner, admin, paying customer, internal user, all users) - **Frequency signal**: How often it's happening (one report, multiple reports, intermittent, every time) - **Any reproduction steps**: If the reporter provided them, even partial ones - **Business context** *(optional)*: Anything that raises stakes (affects revenue, a launch, an SLA, compliance) If severity, environment, or reproducibility can't be determined from the notes, mark them as "Unknown — needs confirmation" rather than guessing, and list the specific missing detail. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Extract and Normalize the Facts Parse the raw notes and separate observation from interpretation: - **Observed behavior**: What actually happened (the symptom) - **Expected behavior**: What should have happened (infer if not stated, and flag it as inferred) - **Trigger**: The action or condition that produced the defect - Strip emotional language, duplicate detail, and speculation into a clean factual restatement. If the reporter's speculation contains a useful lead, preserve it under root-cause hypothesis — not as fact. ### Step 2: Assign Severity Classify using a fixed 4-level scale. Choose the highest level that applies: - **S1 — Critical**: Total outage, data loss/corruption, security or privacy exposure, payment failure, or a full block on a core workflow with no workaround. Affects many users or a high-value user. - **S2 — Major**: A core feature is broken or badly degraded, but a workaround exists OR it affects a limited segment. Significant user friction. - **S3 — Minor**: A non-core feature misbehaves, or a core feature has a cosmetic/edge-case flaw. Users can proceed normally. - **S4 — Trivial**: Cosmetic, copy, or polish issue with no functional impact. State the one-sentence reason the severity landed where it did (which criterion was met). ### Step 3: Assess User Impact Quantify the blast radius using three dimensions: - **Who**: The affected user segment and estimated scope (all users / paying tier / single account / one region) - **How many**: Best estimate from the frequency signal (single report, cluster, widespread) - **Workaround**: Does one exist? If yes, state it in one line. If no, say so — absence of a workaround escalates urgency. ### Step 4: Rate Reproducibility Assign a reproducibility rating, because it directly affects how engineering triages: - **Always** — reproduces 100% of the time with known steps - **Intermittent** — reproduces sometimes; note any pattern (specific browser, timing, data state) - **Once / Unconfirmed** — observed but not yet reproduced - **Cannot reproduce** — steps provided but issue does not recur If reproduction steps are missing or incomplete, generate a numbered "steps to reproduce" attempt from the notes and label it as reconstructed, flagging any gaps. ### Step 5: Form a Root-Cause Hypothesis Offer 1–2 plausible cause categories to give engineering a starting direction — clearly labeled as a hypothesis, not a diagnosis: - Likely layer (frontend / backend / data / integration / config / third-party) - Reasoning in one sentence tied to the observed behavior - If the notes give no signal, state "Insufficient information for a hypothesis." ### Step 6: Recommend the Escalation Path Route the defect and set urgency: - **Owning team**: Best guess at responsible team based on product area (e.g., Payments, Content Platform, Assessment Engine, Infra) - **Urgency**: Immediate (page/on-call) / This sprint / Backlog — derived from severity + impact + reproducibility - **Priority label**: P0 / P1 / P2 / P3 mapped from severity and business context - **Handoff readiness**: "Ready for engineering" or "Blocked — needs [specific missing input]" ## Output Format - **Structure**: A single structured triage card — labeled fields, not prose paragraphs - **Length**: 200–350 words - **Format**: Scannable field-value layout with a short "Reproduction Steps" numbered list and a one-line summary at top - **Sections**: One-line Summary → Severity → User Impact → Reproducibility → Reproduction Steps → Root-Cause Hypothesis → Escalation Path → Missing Info (only if applicable) - **Tone**: Neutral, factual, engineering-ready — no hedging, no emotional carryover from the original report ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] Severity is one of exactly four levels (S1–S4) with a stated reason - [ ] Reproducibility is one of the four defined ratings — not left blank - [ ] Reproduction steps are present as a numbered list (reconstructed and labeled if the reporter didn't provide them) - [ ] Root-cause content is explicitly labeled as hypothesis, never stated as confirmed fact - [ ] Escalation path names an owning team, an urgency level, and a P0–P3 label - [ ] Any unknown field says "Unknown — needs confirmation" with the specific missing detail, rather than being fabricated ## Notes - Severity measures how bad the defect is; priority measures how soon to act. Keep them distinct — an S2 with widespread impact can outrank an S1 affecting one internal user. - When multiple defect notes describe the same underlying issue, consolidate them into one card and note the report count as a frequency signal. - The single most common triage failure is missing reproduction steps — always attempt a reconstructed set so engineering isn't blocked on a round-trip. - Resist over-escalating. Reserve Immediate/P0 for genuine S1 conditions; inflating urgency erodes trust in the triage. --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents 2. 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