Focused Fix

Category: Engineering Domain: Debugging & Maintenance

Overview

Use when

• The user asks to "fix a bug with minimal changes", "do a focused bugfix", or "scope a minimal repair"
• A bug report needs triage to identify the smallest set of files to touch
• A PR is at risk of scope creep (unrelated refactors, style changes, "nearby" fixes)
• A hotfix or release-blocker needs a low-risk, reviewable change set
• The user asks "what is the minimal change to fix X?" or "which files do I need to touch for this bug?"

Quick Start

# Analyze a bug description to identify minimal change scope
python scripts/change_scope_analyzer.py --bug "Login fails when email has + character" --path ./src

# Analyze with JSON output
python scripts/change_scope_analyzer.py --bug "API returns 500 on empty array input" --path ./src --format json

# Analyze with specific file extensions
python scripts/change_scope_analyzer.py --bug "CSS overflow on mobile" --path ./src --extensions .css .scss .html

Tools Overview

change_scope_analyzer.py

--bug

--path

--extensions

--format

change_scope_analyzer.py

• Files most likely related to the bug (keyword matching, import tracing)
• Estimated change scope (number of files, lines)
• Risk assessment for the change
• Recommended fix approach (minimal vs. structural)

Workflows

Focused Bugfix Workflow

1. Write a clear bug description — reproduction steps, expected vs actual behavior
   • Validate: the description names the observable failure, not a guess at the cause
2. Run

   change_scope_analyzer.py

   to identify scope
   • Validate: analyzer output lists concrete files and an estimated line count
3. Review the recommended files and approach
   • Validate: recommended approach is "minimal" — if it says "structural", stop and scope a refactor PR separately
4. Make ONLY the changes needed to fix the bug
   • Validate:

     git diff --stat

     matches (or is smaller than) the analyzer's recommendation
5. Verify no unrelated changes leaked in
   • Validate:

     git diff

     shows no formatting-only changes, no unrelated imports, no "while I'm here" edits
6. Submit PR with focused change set
   • Validate: commit message states the exact bug fixed, and a regression test is included

Scope Validation

1. After making changes, re-run analyzer
2. Compare actual changes against recommended scope
3. Flag any out-of-scope modifications for separate PRs
   • Validate: any file touched that was not in the analyzer recommendation has a one-line justification or is reverted

Reference Documentation

• Focused Fix Methodology - Principles, anti-patterns, and decision framework

Common Patterns

Do

• Fix the exact bug reported
• Add a regression test for the fix
• Document why the fix works in the commit message
• Keep the diff as small as possible

Don't

• Refactor surrounding code during a bugfix
• Fix "nearby" issues in the same PR
• Change formatting or style in touched files
• Add features disguised as bugfixes

Anti-patterns

refactor:

fix:

fix:

change_scope_analyzer.py