BenjaminG Root cause comment
Document why a High/Urgent bug happened and post it as a Linear comment, per the team rule that High/Urgent bugs get a written root cause. Draft-then-confirm: post only when explicitly approved.
1 — Gather context (sequential, before anything else)
Run /investigate $ARGUMENTS to pull the ticket, synced Slack thread, prior work, and the relevant code. Do not start code search or devsql until the ticket + thread are summarized.
If /investigate isn't run, at minimum: linear issue view <id> for the ticket and its synced Slack thread, then trace the offending behaviour to the write paths / commits that introduced and re-introduced it (git log -S, gh pr view).
2 — Find the real cause, not the symptom
Identify the earliest decision that made the bug possible and every later PR that re-introduced or only partially fixed it. The goal is the category of mistake (e.g. "deprecated pattern re-copied into new write paths", "no backfill when a dual-write was introduced"), not a single faulty line. Confirm against code/data — never assert a cause you haven't verified.
3 — Draft in the team format
Render in chat for review. Structure (keep what applies, drop what doesn't):
**Root cause: <one-line category, stated as the real cause not the symptom>.**
<2-4 sentences: the invariant that was violated, and the narrow condition under
which it surfaces — why it stayed invisible most of the time.>
**Timeline:**
* **<PR/ticket ref>** (date): what it changed, and how it set up or re-introduced the bug.
* ...
**Category:** <missing source of truth / regression by copy of deprecated pattern /
forward-only fix without backfill / ...>. Stayed invisible because <condition>.
**This PR ([#NNNN](url)):** <forward fix + backfill scope, with row counts if known>.
Follow-up: <the change that stops the recurrence — usually a single source of truth>.
Rules:
- Explain each term on first use; describe behavior and impact, not code internals. See
[[feedback_pr_didactic_descriptions]]. - Link every PR and ticket as markdown links.
- Cap claims at what you verified; say "unconfirmed" rather than guessing.
4 — Post on approval only
Write the body to a temp file and post with the file flag (preserves markdown):
linear issue comment add <issue-id> --body-file /tmp/root-cause.md
Reply in an existing thread with -p <parentCommentId> (get IDs from linear issue comment list <id>). Never post without explicit confirmation.
Reference examples
BOF-390 (currency/VAT from company instead of proposal) and BOF-423 (proposal-level cohort asymmetry) are the canonical examples of this format — pull them with linear issue comment list BOF-390 if you need a model.