Warranty Terms and Bug Triage During a 6‑Month Code Warranty

TL;DR

A code warranty is a contractual guarantee that your development partner will fix defects in the delivered software at no extra cost for a defined period. Most agencies offer 30 to 90 days; a 6-month code warranty sits well above industry standard and signals serious confidence in code quality. Bug triage during a warranty period is the structured process of validating reported issues, classifying them by severity and priority, and determining whether each one falls under warranty scope or counts as a new feature request. The approved specification document is the single source of truth for resolving that distinction.

What Is a Code Warranty in Software Development?

A software code warranty is a contractual commitment from a development team guaranteeing that the delivered product works as specified. If defects surface during the warranty window, the team fixes them at no additional cost. As one practitioner-focused software house puts it, every software needs a warranty, and the warranty cost is typically included in the purchase price.

This is not the same as ongoing support or maintenance. A warranty covers fixing what should already work according to the agreed specification. Support is reactive, ad-hoc work that keeps the application running. Maintenance is proactive, covering things like dependency updates, server scaling, and adapting to new requirements. The distinction matters because warranty obligations end, while support and maintenance are paid services that continue indefinitely.

Typical warranty durations vary widely:

• 30 days: The floor. Tech Contracts Academy notes they don’t often see software warranties shorter than ninety days, with thirty being the absolute bottom.
• 90 days: The most common standard across custom development contracts.
• 6 months: Above average. This is where firms with strong testing discipline and process rigor operate.
• 12 months: The upper end, rare outside enterprise contracts.

A 6-month warranty period means the development partner absorbs significantly more risk than the industry norm, particularly around third-party changes that can break previously working code. Agencies that ship 60 or more products (like those you can review on Horizon Labs’ client portfolio) build the process maturity needed to stand behind that kind of commitment.

Key Warranty Terms Every Client Should Understand

Understanding warranty terms and bug triage during a 6-month code warranty starts with knowing what the contract actually says. Here are the terms that matter most.

Scope

Warranty scope defines exactly what the development team is obligated to fix. In nearly every software contract, scope is limited to defects, meaning features that do not work as documented in the approved specification. Feature changes and enhancements are excluded because adding new functionality constitutes new development work.

Exclusions

Standard exclusions protect the development team from liability for things outside their control:

• New features or requirement changes requested after delivery
• Bugs caused by client modifications to the codebase
• Third-party service failures (payment processors, APIs, cloud platform outages)
• Force majeure events
• Issues arising from unsupported browsers, devices, or operating systems

Warranty Start Date

The warranty clock starts at final delivery acceptance, not at project kickoff or the first deployment. This is a subtle but important point. If your team spends three weeks on acceptance testing before signing off, those weeks don’t count against the warranty period.

Response Time SLAs

Most warranty agreements tier response times by bug severity. One practical framework structures it this way:

Severity	Description	Typical Response Time
Critical	App unusable, data loss, security breach, payment failure	Same day
High	Major functionality broken, workarounds exist	Within 24 hours
Medium	Non-critical feature issues, UI glitches	Within 48 hours
Low	Cosmetic problems, minor UX friction	Within 1 week

Other practitioners recommend critical bugs fixed within 24 to 48 hours and minor bugs within 5 to 10 business days. The exact SLAs should be spelled out in your contract.

Remedies and Liability Limitations

Warranty remedies typically follow a hierarchy: repair the defect first, replace the component if repair fails, and refund as a last resort. Liability is almost always capped, usually at one to two times the total contract value.

What Is Bug Triage?

Bug triage is the structured process teams use to review, validate, classify, and prioritize reported software defects. Atlassian defines it as a process for identifying, tracking, prioritizing, and addressing software bugs, with the goal of organizing them to prioritize the most critical ones first.

During a warranty period specifically, triage serves a dual purpose. It determines not only how urgent a bug is, but whether the bug falls within warranty scope at all. That second question is where most disputes originate.

Bug Triage Steps During a Warranty Period

Here is how warranty terms and bug triage during a 6-month code warranty work together in practice. The process follows eight steps, synthesized from frameworks by Atlassian, Plane, and BirdEatsBug.

Step 1: Bug Report Screening

Every bug report needs a minimum level of quality before it enters the triage queue. A strong bug report should include a concise summary of the issue, expected versus actual behavior, and clear reproduction steps. Teams should also capture environment details: device, OS, browser, build version, and any relevant feature flags.

Incomplete reports slow everything down. During a warranty period, where the clock is ticking, this matters more than usual.

Step 2: Validation and Deduplication

Before a bug enters the active triage queue, the team confirms three things: Is this a real defect? Can it be reproduced consistently? Does it already exist as a known issue in the tracker? Duplicates get merged. Issues that can’t be reproduced get sent back for more information.

Step 3: Classification

Validated bugs get categorized by type:

• Functional bugs: Features that don’t work as specified
• UI bugs: Visual rendering or layout issues
• Performance bugs: Slow load times, memory leaks, timeouts
• Security bugs: Vulnerabilities, authentication failures, data exposure
• Regression bugs: Previously working features that broke after a change

Teams building with strong CI/CD practices and automated testing (the kind of process rigor described in Horizon Labs’ capabilities) catch regression bugs before they reach production, which reduces the warranty triage burden significantly.

Step 4: Severity Assessment

Severity measures the technical impact of the bug. It is set by engineering or QA, not by the client or product owner.

Severity	Definition	Example
Critical	Complete system failure, data loss, security breach, no workaround	App crashes on launch for all users
High	Major functionality broken for a significant user segment	Checkout flow fails for credit card payments
Medium	Functionality degraded but core workflow still operates	Search results load slowly but return correct data
Low	Cosmetic issues, minor UX friction	Button padding is off by a few pixels

Step 5: Priority Assignment

Priority is a business decision, not a technical one. QA classifies defects by severity based on complexity and criticality, while priority is defined by business stakeholders including project managers, business analysts, and product owners.

Priority levels:

• P1: Fix immediately, current sprint
• P2: Fix in next sprint
• P3: Scheduled for backlog
• P4: Deferred or won’t fix

Step 6: Disposition Decision

Each triaged bug gets one of four outcomes: fix now, schedule in an upcoming sprint, move to a planned release, or close with documented rationale.

Step 7: Assignment

Bugs get assigned to engineers based on expertise and familiarity with the relevant codebase area.

Step 8: Track, Verify, Close

A bug isn’t “fixed” when the code is committed. It’s fixed when the fix is verified in the appropriate environment and the reporter confirms resolution. Tracking through to verified closure, not just assignment, is what separates functional triage from ticket shuffling.

Severity vs. Priority: Why the Difference Matters During Warranty

This distinction is the most commonly confused concept in bug triage, and it causes real problems during a warranty period.

Consider two scenarios:

High severity, low priority. The app crashes when a user clicks a specific button in an admin settings panel that only three people use. Technically severe (a crash is always severe), but the business impact is minimal. This is a warranty-covered bug, but it doesn’t need a same-day fix.

Low severity, high priority. The company logo displays in the wrong color on the landing page two days before a major product launch. Cosmetically minor, but the CEO is calling every hour. This might feel urgent, but if the logo was never specified in the approved design document, it may not qualify as a warranty defect at all.

Confusing severity with priority inflates backlogs, wastes limited warranty time on low-impact issues, and lets genuinely critical defects sit unaddressed. The fix is simple: let engineering assess severity and let business stakeholders set priority. Keep the two conversations separate.

Bug vs. Feature Request: The Number One Warranty Dispute

This is where most post-delivery arguments happen. A client reports something as a “bug.” The development team calls it a “feature request.” Neither side is necessarily wrong. They’re just looking at different definitions of what the software should do.

The resolution is straightforward: a bug qualifies under warranty when the app behaves differently from the approved specification, crashes unexpectedly, loses data, or produces incorrect results under normal usage conditions. The approved specification document is the deciding factor.

Here’s a practical reference table:

Warranty Bug (Covered)	Not Warranty (Out of Scope)
Feature crashes on supported devices	Feature works but client wants it redesigned
Data saves incorrectly or is lost	Client wants additional data fields
Login fails for valid credentials	Client wants a new login method (e.g., SSO)
Push notifications do not deliver	Client wants different notification triggers
Payment processing returns errors	Client wants to add a new payment provider
App does not match approved specs	Client wants to change the original specs

Practitioner perspectives reinforce this. Developer and author Iris Classon notes on her blog that in hourly contracts, bugs are typically billed to the client unless there’s “a major screw up,” and that most companies try to keep clients happy regardless. One developer told her these things “usually sort themselves out naturally.” That’s true, but only when scope is well-documented. Without a clear specification, “sorting it out” becomes a negotiation neither side enjoys.

The lesson: invest time in detailed acceptance criteria at project kickoff. Every hour spent on specification clarity saves ten hours of warranty disputes later. If you’re evaluating how a development partner handles scope definition and acceptance criteria through their estimation process, that’s a strong signal of how warranty disputes will (or won’t) go.

Why a 6-Month Warranty Is Above Industry Standard

Most development agencies offer 30 to 90 days of warranty coverage. The industry standard for functionality guarantees is 30 days. A 6-month code warranty is two to six times longer than what most firms provide.

Why don’t more agencies offer longer warranties? Because the constantly changing technology infrastructure around new software makes functionality impossible to guarantee beyond a point. Consider a typical web application. It depends on a framework, a programming language runtime, multiple browsers, operating systems, CDNs, and various third-party APIs. Chrome alone releases new versions roughly monthly. Any one of those external updates can introduce incompatibilities that break previously working code, through no fault of the developer.

As Tech Contracts Academy frames it, a warranty doesn’t really involve a guarantee that the thing won’t break down. It involves a shift of the risk from one party to the other. A 6-month warranty means the agency is absorbing third-party dependency risk for twice the standard duration.

What does that signal? Three things:

1. Confidence in code quality. Teams that write well-tested, well-structured code don’t fear warranty claims.
2. Testing discipline. Automated test suites, CI/CD pipelines, and thorough QA processes catch defects before delivery, not after.
3. Willingness to stand behind deliverables. Professional developers stand behind their work. An “as-is” delivery with no warranty is a red flag.

Horizon Labs offers a 6-month or longer code warranty on delivered work, covering defects within original scope at no charge. Combined with documentation, architecture decision records, and monitoring setup before go-live, this represents an uncommon level of post-delivery commitment. You can explore the full scope of capabilities and warranty coverage or book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss how it applies to your project.

What Happens When the Warranty Expires

One day, bug fixes are free. The next, they cost $150 to $250 per hour. That transition catches many clients off guard.

After the warranty period ends, all defect resolution becomes billable work. Clients typically choose between two models:

Maintenance retainer. A fixed monthly fee covering a set number of hours for bug fixes, dependency updates, monitoring, and minor improvements. This provides predictable budgeting and guaranteed availability.

Per-incident pricing. Pay only when something breaks. Cheaper if nothing goes wrong, but response times may be slower since retainer clients get priority.

The smart move is to plan this transition before the warranty expires, not after. Discuss post-warranty options during month four or five, not on the day the warranty clock runs out. Service gaps and budget surprises are entirely avoidable with minimal planning.

Growth retainers that include monitoring, alerting, and backup protocols are particularly valuable for applications that need to stay operational around the clock. Check out additional resources on post-launch planning for more on this topic.

Quick-Reference Summary: Warranty Terms Glossary

Term	Definition	Why It Matters
Code Warranty	Contractual obligation to fix defects at no cost during a defined period	Sets the baseline expectation for post-delivery quality
Warranty Scope	The specific defects and behaviors covered, tied to the approved specification	Prevents disputes by defining what’s in and what’s out
Exclusions	Categories of issues not covered (new features, third-party failures, client modifications)	Protects both parties from unreasonable claims
Warranty Start Date	The date of final delivery acceptance	Determines when the clock starts ticking
Bug Triage	Structured process for validating, classifying, and prioritizing defects	Ensures the most critical issues get fixed first
Severity	Technical impact of a bug (Critical, High, Medium, Low), assessed by engineering	Drives the technical response and SLA tier
Priority	Business urgency of a bug (P1 through P4), set by stakeholders	Drives the scheduling and resource allocation
Response SLA	Contractual response time commitment, tiered by severity	Sets client expectations for communication speed
Defect vs. Feature Request	Whether reported behavior contradicts the approved spec (defect) or requests new functionality (feature)	The most common source of warranty disputes
Post-Warranty Transition	Shift from free warranty fixes to billable support/maintenance	Requires advance planning to avoid service gaps

For more terms related to software development contracts and processes, browse the full glossary.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a 6-month code warranty actually cover?

A 6-month code warranty covers defects in the delivered software, meaning behavior that deviates from the approved specification. If a feature crashes, data saves incorrectly, or functionality doesn’t match what was agreed upon, the development team fixes it at no extra cost. New features, design changes, and third-party service failures are not covered.

How is a warranty bug different from a feature request?

A warranty bug is something that doesn’t work as specified. A feature request is something that works correctly but the client wants changed or added. The approved specification document is the deciding factor. If the behavior matches the spec, it’s not a warranty defect, even if the client doesn’t like it.

What is bug triage and why does it matter during a warranty?

Bug triage is the process of reviewing, validating, classifying, and prioritizing reported defects. During a warranty period, triage serves double duty: it determines both the urgency of each bug and whether it falls within warranty scope. Without a structured triage process, teams waste limited warranty time on low-priority or out-of-scope issues.

Is 6 months a standard warranty period for software development?

No. The industry standard is 30 to 90 days. A 6-month warranty is two to six times longer than what most agencies offer. Longer warranties mean the development team absorbs more risk from third-party changes (browser updates, OS changes, API modifications), which signals confidence in their code quality and testing practices.

What is the difference between severity and priority in bug triage?

Severity measures the technical impact of a bug and is assessed by engineering. Priority measures the business urgency and is set by product owners or stakeholders. A critical-severity bug on a rarely used feature might be low priority. A low-severity visual bug on a launch page might be high priority. Keeping these assessments separate prevents misallocation of resources.

What should I do before my code warranty expires?

Start planning the transition to a paid support or maintenance arrangement during month four or five of a six-month warranty. Decide between a maintenance retainer (fixed monthly hours) and per-incident pricing. Discuss monitoring, alerting, and backup protocols. Waiting until the warranty expires creates service gaps and budget surprises.

What makes a good bug report during a warranty period?

A good bug report includes a concise summary of the issue, the expected behavior versus actual behavior, clear steps to reproduce the problem, and environment details (device, OS, browser, build version). Incomplete reports slow down triage and waste warranty time on back-and-forth clarification.

Can third-party changes cause bugs that aren’t covered by warranty?

Yes. If a browser update, operating system patch, or third-party API change breaks previously working functionality, this typically falls outside warranty scope because the developer didn’t cause the defect. However, some agencies with longer warranties absorb this risk. The specific exclusions should be clearly defined in your contract.