What if your bug tracker

asked the questions?

Meet
BURT
An open-source chatbot for reporting app bugs.
burt · interactive bug reporting
Observed behaviorExpected behaviorSteps to reproduce
Chat box
Hi, I’m BURT. Which app has the problem?
AntennaPod
GnuCash
Time Tracker
Droid Weight
Droid Weight
What went wrong? Describe what you saw.
The weight graph doesn’t show my new entry
Is it one of these screens?
Reported steps
1Launch the appedit
2Tap “Add weight”edit
3Type “72.5”edit
4Tap “Save”edit
Screen captures · last three steps
The yellow oval marks the component each step used.
Quick actions
FinishRestartPreview report
Tips
Tip · Describe one step at a time, like “Tap the Save button”.
1
2
3
4
5
One conversation. Five panels.
Chat box. Describe the bug; pick from suggested screens.
Reported steps. Every step so far, ready to edit.
Screen captures. The last three steps, as the app showed them.
Quick actions + tips. Finish, restart, preview, and live guidance.

Bug report

Droid Weight · generated by BURT
Observed behavior

The weight graph doesn’t show my new entry

Expected behavior

The graph should include the new weight

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch the app · 2. Tap “Add weight” · 3. Type “72.5” · 4. Tap “Save”

Out comes a report. Text and screenshots, for every element.
Under the hood
BURT GUIchat + panels
Dialogue Managerconversation flow
Natural Language Parserdependency parsing
Report Processing Enginequality checks · step prediction
App Execution Modelgraph of screens + actions

Bring your own app.

Upload an icon and a ZIP of execution data in the Developer Panel. BURT builds the app’s model from it.

CrashScope explorationAVT recordingsTraceReplayer
ZIP
execution-data.zip
18 end users reported 12 bugs from six Android apps
12 of 18found BURT easy or somewhat easy to use
0%of written steps matched to the right screen
8.3%incorrect steps, vs. 20.4% with a template form

BURT: A Chatbot for Interactive Bug Reporting

Yang Song · Junayed Mahmud · Nadeeshan De Silva · Ying Zhou · Oscar Chaparro · Kevin Moran · Andrian Marcus · Denys Poshyvanyk
ICSE 2023 · IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering · Tool Demonstrations