Triage flow: from the scare to the regression sensor

The path TriageBug imposes on every bug — reproduce, isolate, fix and prove — and why the last step is what prevents the return.

TriageBug swaps the guess for a flow. Every bug crosses four stations, and none can be skipped without leaving the hunt incomplete.

1. Reproduce deterministically

Before any fix, the bug must be triggered on demand. A bug that only shows up “sometimes” is a bug not yet understood. Deterministic reproduction turns the phenomenon into a concrete case, with known inputs and conditions.

2. Isolate the cause

With the reproducible case in hand, triage narrows the search space down to the real cause — not the nearest symptom. This is where the operational voice is worth gold: separating what is urgent from what is recurring and from what only seemed related.

3. Fix

The fix comes after understanding, not before. Touching the code without the reproducible case is gambling; with it, it’s engineering. The change is minimal and aimed at the cause isolated in the previous station.

4. Prove with a regression sensor

The step almost every team skips. Closing the hunt means creating a check that used to reproduce the bug and that now passes — and that will fail again if the bug returns. It is that sensor, not the momentary relief, that answers the question “is it really over?”. The answer stops being a feeling and becomes a repeatable result.