follow-the-threadlisted

When a red CI test, a failing check, or a single bug crosses your path, follow it instead of dismissing it — one thread reliably sources many issues worth working. A failing test maps to an existing issue whose root cause is often an existing UPSTREAM bug; fixing that means reading the surrounding subsystem, where adjacent open issues surface; searching near it seeds the next. A convenient "it also fixes X" is a hypothesis, not a finding — verify the mechanism. A SOURCING method: it finds where the help actually is, before any PR. Use when you hit a red CI, a flake, or one bug — and equally when a MAINTAINER hands you a lead in passing ("not fully related to this issue, but…", "years ago I…", "that's always been fragile"), the same method from the other end. Trigger terms: red CI, flaky test, follow the thread, upstream root cause, adjacent issue, sibling bug, "not my bug", where's the real work, reviewer mentioned something unrelated, offhand remark in a review, act on that comment.
serhiy-bzhezytskyy/contrib-receipts · ★ 0 · AI & Automation · score 75

Install: claude install-skill serhiy-bzhezytskyy/contrib-receipts

# Follow the thread ## Purpose The most productive way to find work worth doing is not triage or a good-first-issue scan — it's to **follow a thread you already touched**. One red CI test, followed honestly instead of waved off as "not my bug," root-causes to an upstream issue; fixing that means reading the subsystem around it, where adjacent open issues are already filed; searching near that one surfaces a third. The signal is in the code you're already standing in. Etiquette skills stop you from being noise; this one finds where the signal is. The discipline is one question at every hop: **"why does THIS happen?"** instead of "not mine." Each honest answer either ends the thread or hands you the next issue. ## When to use - **A maintainer hands you the thread** — the highest-value entry point and the easiest to waste. Phrases to treat as a lead, not as small talk: *"not fully related to this issue, but…"*, *"on a branch years ago I…"*, *"we've always wanted to…"*, *"that's always been fragile"*. A committer volunteering unpaid history is telling you where a real defect lives, from memory nobody else has. See the second receipt. - A red CI or a flake appears on your own PR, or on a repo you're already in. - You've root-caused one bug and want to know whether it's isolated or a nest. - You're standing in an unfamiliar subsystem and want to read outward, not just fix the one line you came for. ## When NOT to use You already have a scoped, agreed task to land —