Quoting Armin Ronacher

2026-05-24 · Source: Simon Willison's Weblog · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning · Depth: Intermediate, quick

Summary

Armin Ronacher, commenting on May 24, 2026, highlighted a significant frustration in open-source project management, specifically concerning issue reports filed against the Pi project. He observed that many submissions are "not in their own voice," often reworded by an automated "clanker," which introduces inaccuracies and confident but baseless conclusions. This leads to speculative root causes, unhelpful reproduction steps, misguided implementation suggestions, and irrelevant error lists. Ronacher advocates for a streamlined approach, urging reporters to condense issues to four core human observations: the command executed, the expected outcome, the actual outcome, and the exact error or log. This aims to improve the clarity and utility of bug reports for maintainers.

Key takeaway

For any Software Engineer or AI Engineer filing bug reports, avoid using AI tools or "clankers" to rephrase your observations. Such automation often introduces inaccuracies and confident but misleading conclusions, wasting maintainer time. Instead, you should focus on directly documenting what you observed: the precise command run, your expected outcome, the actual result, and the exact error logs. This direct, human-centric approach ensures clarity and accelerates effective problem resolution for projects like Pi.

Key insights

Automated rephrasing of bug reports by "clankers" introduces inaccuracies, making direct human observation essential for effective issue resolution.

Principles

• Issue reports must reflect direct human observation.
• Automated rephrasing often degrades report accuracy.
• Confidence does not equate to factual accuracy.

Method

Condense issue reports to four points: the command run, the expected outcome, the actual outcome, and the exact error or log observed by a human.

In practice

• State the exact command executed.
• Clearly define expected versus actual behavior.
• Include raw, unedited error messages or logs.

Topics

• Issue Reporting
• Bug Tracking
• Open-Source Software
• Software Development
• Quality Assurance
• Pi Project

Best for: Machine Learning Engineer, NLP Engineer, AI Product Manager, Software Engineer, AI Engineer, Prompt Engineer

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Simon Willison's Weblog.