Automated Bug Triaging using Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models

Abstract: Bug triaging, the task of assigning new issues to developers, is often slow and inconsistent in large projects. We present a lightweight framework that instruction-tuned LLM with LoRA adapters and uses candidate-constrained decoding to ensure valid assignments. Tested on EclipseJDT and Mozilla datasets, the model achieves strong shortlist quality (Hit at 10 up to 0.753) despite modest exact Top-1 accuracy. On recent snapshots, accuracy rises sharply, showing the framework's potential for real-world, human-in-the-loop triaging. Our results suggest that instruction-tuned LLMs offer a practical alternative to costly feature engineering and graph-based methods.