crash-cluster-triage

name	crash-cluster-triage
description	Capture a WER dump, root-cause a reproducible WoW.exe (FG) crash, and ship a hardening patch + regression guard, documented as a crash cluster. Use when the foreground client crashes repeatably.
trigger	crash triage, WoW.exe crash, WER dump, FG crash, root cause a crash, hardening patch, crash cluster, CRASH-001

Crash Cluster Triage

Goal

Turn a reproducible foreground-client crash into a documented cluster: capture the dump, root-cause it, ship a hardening patch with a regression guard, and record the cluster so it doesn't recur silently.

Inputs

• A reproducible crash (console stderr, WoW.exe unhandled exception, or WER report) and its trigger sequence.
• Key references:
  • Crash research home: docs/Plan/Crashes/README.md (structure + WER capture plan); historical reference: CRASH-001 (a known client bug — an acceptable test skip per CLAUDE.md).
  • Hardening sites: Exports/BotRunner/ (FG guards), Services/WoWStateManager/ (state guards), native Navigation.dll (collision edge cases).
• Area rules: .github/instructions/services.instructions.md, .github/instructions/native.instructions.md.

Status: The crash-research structure is defined in docs/Plan/Crashes/README.md, but WER-capture tooling is not yet implemented on this branch — set up local dumps manually (below) per cluster.

Preconditions

• A minimal, repeatable reproduction (set, GM commands, task sequence).
• Process safety: only kill the specific WoW.exe PID you launched — never blanket-kill (D2Bot and other repos share this machine).

Procedure

1. Create a cluster doc docs/Plan/Crashes/crash-<name>.md with Symptoms and Reproduction.
2. Enable local dumps: registry HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\WoW.exe → DumpFolder, DumpType=2 (full), DumpCount.
3. Reproduce, collect the dump, and root-cause it (WinDbg) — record the faulting stack in the cluster doc.
4. Ship a hardening patch at the right layer (null/bounds guard, state-machine fix, native edge-case fix) + a regression test or guard.
5. Add a FailureReason for the path if appropriate (see [[failure-reason-mapping]]), and mark the cluster Hardened.

Verification

• The reproduction no longer crashes after the patch.
• The regression test/guard is green; broader suite unaffected (.\scripts\test-fast.ps1).
• The cluster doc records symptoms → root cause → fix → guard.

Outputs

• docs/Plan/Crashes/crash-<name>.md, a hardening patch, and a regression guard.

Failure modes and recovery

• Patching a symptom, not the cause — confirm the faulting stack from the dump.
• Blanket process kills during repro — kill only your PID.
• No regression guard — the cluster will recur; always add one (or document why it's an accepted client bug like CRASH-001).

Related skills

• [[failure-reason-mapping]] — classify the crash path.
• [[fg-bg-physics-parity]] — physics edge cases that crash the client.
• [[debugging]] — general investigation workflow.
• Reference: docs/Plan/Crashes/README.md.