Bug Fix Protocol Agent Skill
8-step disciplined bug-fix protocol that treats every production bug as two failures — the code defect itself and the testing system that allowed it through. Use when fixing a production bug, investigating a regression, writing a post-mortem, or auditing a missed defect. Triggers on "fix this bug", "production bug", "regression test", "post-mortem", "test gap", "why did the tests miss this".
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/CodeAlive-AI/ai-driven-development --skill bug-fix-protocolWhat comes with it
7 109 bytes besides the instructionThe instruction itself
5 sections, as written by the authorBug Fix Protocol
A bug fix is two fixes in one: fix the code, and fix the testing system that let the bug through. Skipping the second step means the same class of bug ships again.
The full protocol (philosophy, eight steps with examples, audit checklist, anti-patterns) lives in PROTOCOL.md. Read it before applying.
When to apply
Use this protocol whenever a defect reaches production, staging, or a customer environment. Do not use it for bugs caught locally during normal development — those are part of the writing process, not testing-system failures.
The eight steps (summary)
- Analyze and reproduce requirements. Understand exact actual vs expected behaviour; identify minimal repro path; ask the user before guessing on ambiguities.
- Write a failing test (red). Encode the bug as a test that fails for the right reason. No code change yet.
- Trace root cause. Walk the failing test back through the system. Stop at the smallest place that, if changed, makes the test pass.
- Apply the minimal fix. Smallest possible change. No drive-by refactors.
- Verify green locally. Failing test now passes; no other tests regressed.
- Run the full suite + lints + types. Catch indirect regressions.
- Document the fix. Commit message and PR description name the symptom, the root cause, and the fix in one sentence each.
- Audit the testing system (the most important step). Ask: *which layer should have caught this, and why didn't it?* Then change that layer so it would catch the next instance — new test type, new fixture, new lint rule, new property test, new contract assertion. A fix without step 8 is incomplete.
Output expectations
When applying the protocol, return:
- The repro test (red, then green).
- The minimal code fix.
- A one-paragraph step-8 audit naming the missed coverage layer and the change made to close the gap.
If step 8 produces "we couldn't have caught this," investigate further — that answer is almost always wrong, and accepting it is how the testing system stagnates.
Reference
Full text: PROTOCOL.md.
Other skills for the same job
different authors, same section of the catalogue
Toolkit for interacting with and testing local web applications using Playwright. Supports verifying frontend functionality, debugging UI behavior, capturing browser screenshots, and viewing browser logs.
Use when implementation is complete, all tests pass, and you need to decide how to integrate the work - guides completion of development work by presenting structured options for merge, PR, or cleanup
Use when implementing any feature or bugfix, before writing implementation code
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes
Use when about to claim work is complete, fixed, or passing, before committing or creating PRs - requires running verification commands and confirming output before making any success claims; evidence before assertions always
Expert guidance for systematic backtesting of trading strategies. Use when developing, testing, stress-testing, or validating quantitative trading strategies. Covers "beating ideas to death" methodology, parameter robustness testing, slippage modeling, bias prevention, and interpreting backtest results. Applicable when user asks about backtesting, strategy validation, robustness testing, avoiding overfitting, or systematic trading development.
Cloud laboratory platform for automated protein testing and validation. Use when designing proteins and needing experimental validation including binding assays, expression testing, thermostability measurements, enzyme activity assays, or protein sequence optimization. Also use for submitting experiments via API, tracking experiment status, downloading results, optimizing protein sequences for better expression using computational tools (NetSolP, SoluProt, SolubleMPNN, ESM), or managing protein design workflows with wet-lab validation.
This skill should be used for time series machine learning tasks including classification, regression, clustering, forecasting, anomaly detection, segmentation, and similarity search. Use when working with temporal data, sequential patterns, or time-indexed observations requiring specialized algorithms beyond standard ML approaches. Particularly suited for univariate and multivariate time series analysis with scikit-learn compatible APIs.
How to use it
Take codealive-ai/bug-fix-protocol from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.