Manage defects: create, triage and close

Create a defect in Qualflare, find the ones it creates for you, then triage, route to a team, change the status, reopen, verify fixes and report on trends.

To work with defects in Qualflare, open Defects under Analysis in the project sidebar; creating, triaging and closing defects needs the Editor role or higher in the project, on every plan.

Before you begin

Reading defects needs Viewer+ · project (requires the Viewer role or higher in the project), creating, triaging, assigning a team and commenting need Editor+ · project (requires the Editor role or higher in the project), and deleting in the app needs Owner · project (requires the Owner role in the project). Your role on a project is the higher of your project role and your workspace role, but in the web app today, buttons follow your project role. See Roles and permissions.
Routing needs project teams, under Teams in the project sidebar.
For fields, statuses and categories, see Defects.

Create a defect

Create Defect starts a defect at Medium severity with no environment, and the panel cannot change the environment later.

Open the Defects page

In the project sidebar, under Analysis, click Defects, then Create Defect.

Fill in the Create Defect form

Enter a Name of 3 to 128 characters and an optional Description. Severity defaults to Medium and Environment to No environment; pick the environment now, because the panel can't change it later.

Save the defect

Click Create. You should see the new defect as Active, with the category Unknown.

Add the expected and actual results

In the defect's panel, on the Overview tab, click the edit button next to Expected Result and Actual Result.

A useful report covers one bug, with a title like [Feature] + [What happened] + [Condition] ("Checkout fails when billing address differs from shipping"), what happened, how to reproduce it, how often and the impact. Name the launch and test case: attachments stay on the case run.

Find defects Qualflare creates

Check for a defect Qualflare opened from a failure cluster, flaky test or redundant case notification (How defects are created) before you log a duplicate.

Filter by Category, such as Flaky Test, or by Status to find the defects Qualflare created before you log a duplicate.

Filter the list by category or status

Filter Category, for example to Flaky Test, or Status. You can also type a token such as category:flaky. See Search, filters and shortcuts.

Open the defect and check its source

Cluster and flaky-detection defects show the Automated icon, and a cluster defect has a Linked Cluster card. Redundant-case defects show Manual.

Check the linked test cases

Open the Related Cases tab; a test case's Defects tab lists the same links. A flaky-detection defect names its case instead. See Failure clusters.

Triage new defects

List the new defects

Filter Status to Active and Severity to Critical and High, then click Date Created: the first click shows the newest first.

Check the report

If the name, description or results don't explain the problem, ask on the Comments tab.

Decide whether it's a real bug

A test, environment or data problem, or a flaky test, is a False positive. A bug that's already tracked is Closed, with a comment naming the original.

Set the severity

Use the Severity submenu in the row or panel More options (⋯) menu. See Severity.

Route it and set the status

Route it to a team, and set Action Required when someone must act. Leave it Active while it waits for information.

Outcome	Status	Notes
Valid bug, needs fixing	Action Required	Assign a team
Valid bug, but not now	Active	Lower the severity if it's less urgent
Not a bug (test issue)	False positive	Add an explanation
Duplicate	Closed	Name the original defect in a comment
Needs investigation	Active	Add a comment with questions
Already fixed	Closed	Note the fix in a comment

Route a defect to a team

Pick a team in the Team column

In the Team column, click Assign team (or the current team) and select a team. To clear it, click × on the chip or reselect the current team. See Assigning teams to defects.

Check who was notified

Other team members get an in-app notification, and an email if Team Assignment Notifications is on in the project settings.

To move a stuck defect to another team, pick the new team and say why in a comment.

Change the status

Any defect can move to any of the four statuses from its Status submenu, in the list or in the panel.

Open the Status submenu

Click More options (⋯) on the defect's row or in its panel, then Status.

Choose the new status

Choose Active, Action Required, False Positive or Closed. Any status can follow any other.

Set Closed after a verified fix and False positive when the defect isn't real, with a comment, because there is no closure reason.

Reopen a defect

Reopening a Closed defect needs a reason of up to 1,000 characters, and the defect returns to Active.

Open the Closed defect

Click a Closed defect's name to open its panel.

Choose Reopen

Click More options (⋯) > Reopen.

Enter a reason and confirm

Enter a Reopen Reason (required, up to 1,000 characters) and click Reopen.

You should see it Active, with a Reopen Reason block on the Overview tab. False positive defects have no Reopen.

Verify a fix

Related Cases lists the test cases to re-run before you close a defect. You can unlink a case here, but not link one.

Find the affected test cases

Open the Related Cases tab. For a flaky-detection defect, the case is in the defect's name.

Run the tests again

Re-run the cases in CI, or start a new launch. See Run tests and Case runs.

Close or reopen the defect

If the tests pass, set Closed. If not, keep it open, or reopen it. Add a comment naming the launch.

Also re-run nearby tests, and run an intermittent failure several times. Qualflare closes recovered flaky-detection defects and reopens cluster defects whose failures return (Automatic status changes). No setting changes a defect's status from CI results.

Check release readiness

Defects aren't linked to milestones.

Filter for open Critical and High defects

Filter Status to Active and Action Required, and Severity to Critical and High.

Review the milestone

Under Planning, click Milestones, open the milestone and review its Health and Launches tabs. See Milestones.

Confirm the fixes

Re-run the affected tests, as in Verify a fix.

Before you release, check that:

no Critical defect is open;
High defects are closed, or the exceptions written down;
fixes are verified by re-runs.

Report on defect trends

The Overview Quality group has the Defects, Defects by Severity and Defects by Category charts for the last 7, 15 or 28 days, with an Environment filter, and a Defects Opened tile that compares today with the previous period's daily average.

The app has no defect export, but the CLI prints defects as JSON (Defects commands):

qf <identifier> defects list --severity critical,high --status active
qf <identifier> defect get <seq>

AI clients read them with the MCP list_defects and get_defect tools (Connect a coding agent (MCP)). Include:

defects opened and closed, by severity;
defects still open at the end;
categories that keep coming back.

Comment on a defect

Open the Comments tab

Open the defect and click Comments.

Reply, edit or delete

Click Reply on a comment. Replies go one level deep, and only that comment's author is notified; there are no @mentions. To edit or delete your own comment, use its menu. Edited comments show (edited).

Comments work the same way on test cases, launches and milestones. See Discuss work in comments.

Delete a defect

Deleting a defect can't be undone

Delete takes effect at once. The row menu and the panel menu don't ask you to confirm; only bulk Delete does. Deleting a defect also deletes its comments, its links to test cases and its record of linked issues. Issues already created in GitHub, GitLab, Jira or Linear stay there. You can't undo a delete.

One defect: More options (⋯) > Delete in its row or panel deletes it at once.
Several: select them and click Delete, which asks you to confirm.

In the app, Delete is enabled only for project Owners.

Troubleshoot

A minimum of 3 characters is required.: the new name is too short.
Must be at least 2 characters.: Edit needs a name and a description.
Reopen reason is required. or Maximum 1000 characters allowed.: the reason must be 1 to 1,000 characters.
Change status coming soon: bulk Change Status isn't available; change statuses one at a time.
A name over 128 characters doesn't save, though the form accepts 200.
Delete is disabled: only project Owners can delete in the app.
Buttons are disabled although your workspace role is higher: the app follows your project role.
No way to link a case by hand: you can only unlink cases.
The panel can't change the environment: use MCP update_defect or the API.
A redundant-case defect shows Unknown: the app shows its category that way.
A deleted cluster defect doesn't come back.

Next steps

Defects · Failure clusters · GitHub · Jira · Defects commands

Create, triage and close defects

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