Respond To Issue

3. Verify before citing

Before including specific details in the response, verify them:

• If citing a commit hash, confirm the commit message and diff match what you're claiming (git show <hash> --stat).
• If citing a file path and line number, re-read the file to confirm the line content is correct.
• If claiming code is unused or missing, do a thorough grep to make sure you haven't missed a reference.

4. Draft the response

Write a response that:

• Is technically accurate and grounded in the actual code (cite file paths and line numbers where helpful).
• Is respectful and welcoming to external contributors.
• Directly addresses the question or concern raised.
• If the contributor identified a real gap or bug, acknowledge it clearly.
• If there's a workaround, mention it.
• If work is planned or a fix would be welcome, say so and suggest next steps (e.g., "a PR to address this would be welcome").
• Keeps the tone professional but friendly.
• Is concise -- contributors appreciate direct answers, not walls of text.

5. Suggest follow-up actions

If the issue identifies something cleanly actionable (dead code to remove, a small bug fix, a missing feature), tell the maintainer and offer to create a branch and PR to address it — don't just draft a comment.

6. Present to the maintainer

Show the drafted response to the user (the maintainer) for review. Do NOT post it to GitHub automatically. The maintainer will decide whether to post it, edit it, or ask for changes.

Format the draft as a quoted markdown block so it's easy to copy.

Important guidelines

• Never post comments to GitHub without explicit approval from the user.
• If you're unsure about the answer, say so clearly in your draft and flag the uncertainty for the maintainer.
• If the issue is outside the scope of what you can determine from the code, tell the maintainer what you found and what remains unclear.
• Check whether similar issues exist that might be relevant: gh issue list --repo NVIDIA/Megatron-LM --search "<keywords>" --limit 5.