What problem does it solve?
Recurring bugs that "keep coming back" are not isolated incidents — they are patterns with multiple instances across the codebase, where past fixes only addressed single cases instead of the underlying root cause, leading to repeated regressions whenever new code touches the affected pattern.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Historical Bug Archaeology: Traces all past fixes for the same symptom via git log to confirm if a bug family exists.
- Full Instance Enumeration: Greps the entire codebase for the bug pattern's signature to map every affected surface, including unreported sibling bugs.
- Shared Resolver Implementation: Extracts duplicated flawed logic into a single reusable module so new code cannot half-implement the pattern.
- Anti-Recurrence Guard Tests: Adds automated tests that fail if the pattern is reimplemented outside the shared resolver, preventing future regressions.
- Sibling Bug Sweeps: Audits for other bugs with the same root cause shape to fix related issues in one pass.
Use Case: A display name bug that was "fixed" 3 times across different UI surfaces kept regressing; this skill identified 7 total affected surfaces with duplicated fallback logic, fixed the root data layer issue once, and added guard tests to stop future regressions.
Quick Start
Use the bug-family-hunt skill to investigate a recurring form validation error, locate every instance of the duplicated validation logic across the codebase, implement a single shared validation resolver, and add guard tests to ensure the pattern cannot be reintroduced in future code changes.
