debug-triage

When to activate

• User pastes a terminal or PowerShell transcript containing an error.
• User pastes a stack trace.
• User says "debug", "fix this", "why is this broken", "what's going on here".

Do NOT activate for refactoring requests, feature work, or general code review -- those are separate tasks.

Steps

1. Parse the actual error. Read stack traces bottom-up. The top frame is usually the symptom; the root cause is deeper in the stack or earlier in the log. Ignore generic first lines like "Traceback (most recent call last):" or "Uncaught Error".
2. State the likely cause in one sentence. Not a paragraph. "Null dereference on user.profile because the auth middleware returns null for unverified emails."
3. Propose the fix as a diff or command. Not prose. Either a code snippet showing before/after, or the exact shell command to run.
4. Name a regression test. Where it would live (tests/auth/email_verify_test.py), and what assertion would catch this bug next time. One line.
5. Flag sibling updates. If the fix changes behavior documented in README, CHANGELOG, or any doc file, list them. If not, say "none".

Rules