etiquetteA few weeks ago, @horw released a new GitHub plugin that fixes GitHub issue titles: issue-title-ai. Once an issue is created, the plugin asks ChatGPT—or DeepSeek, or Claude—to improve its title. We’ve already integrated the plugin into objectionary/eo and a few other repositories. Works like a charm. What’s wrong with the titles the way they are, you may ask? Why do we need to ask ChatGPT to make them “better”? Because we want every issue—either a bug report, a feature request, or a question—to be formulated as a complaint. It seems that very few of us can do it on the first try. The help of AI is appreciated.
Let’s say, you try to download a PNG file from a web app, but get a text file instead. You want to report this problem to the team. How would you title such a bug report? Pick one, out of these eight:
- “CSV”
- “CSV file downloading”
- “Please, fix CSV-file downloading”
- “CSV downloading must be fixed”
- “Why I get text file instead of PNG?”
- “How can I download PNG file?”
- “I need text file, not PNG”
- “PNG downloading is broken, getting CSV instead”
There may be even more variations… but the best is the last one. It clearly states that something is broken. It demands a fix.
Even if it’s a feature request or a question, it should be filed as a complaint. This rule—known as bug driven development—increases our productivity. In every request made to the team we have to explain the difference between our expectations and reality. The lack of such an explanation seems to be the primary source of confusion and frustration in task tracking.
Apparently, very few programmers have this skill: formulating a problem as a complaint. AI should help us.
