How to write a bug report that a coding tool can start from

A bug report lands mid-afternoon: "Checkout is broken sometimes." Anyone who has picked one up knows the first hour goes to questions, not code. A coding tool starts with even less than you do, only what the brief gives it. It wasn't at Tuesday's stand-up and it doesn't know which "checkout" you mean.

Here is a five-part brief that works for a coding tool, a new teammate or yourself next week. The scene above and the example below are hypothetical and illustrative.

Part 1: What you saw and what you expected

One sentence each. Expected: an order confirmation page after payment. Seen: a blank page on some orders, since this morning.

Part 2: The smallest steps that reproduce it

Cut the steps until removing any one of them makes the bug disappear. If you can't reproduce it, say so, and list the conditions where it did and didn't happen: browser, account type, order size.

Part 3: Where to look, and where not to touch

Name the likely files, the branch to work on and the logs worth reading. Then name what must not change: the payment integration, the database schema, anything generated. The fence matters as much as the map.

Part 4: How you'll know it's fixed

The test that should pass, or the exact check you will run. A fix without a check is a guess that happens to compile.

Part 5: What to send back

Ask for a short note: what changed and why, what the tool is unsure about, and anything it noticed but left alone. That last line is where the next bug report often comes from.

Keep the brief with the task

When a brief gets separated from its task, the next tool or person starts from zero. Put it where the work happens: at the top of the ticket, or at the top of whatever you hand over.

Where Octuo fits

Octuo is a personal assistant and one starting point for work across AI, tools and specialist services. It hands tasks to supported specialist tools on your computer once you've installed, set up and authorized them, including coding agents such as Codex or Claude Code (we mention them only as examples; no partnership or endorsement is implied). For the supported tools and accounts you connect and authorize, it carries the context each task needs, tracks progress and gathers results, so a brief like this travels with the task. That context is not a sync of each tool's native chat history. Each service's own terms and usage limits still apply, and external subscriptions and Octuo usage are separate costs. Octuo is available for macOS.