Quick answer: Set up a lightweight tracker at the very start so capturing bugs is effortless from the first one, the habit forms early, and nothing is lost during development. Starting bug tracking on day one costs almost nothing and saves you from the painful, lossy scramble of bolting it on later.
Most developers add bug tracking when the bugs become overwhelming, usually around launch, which is the worst possible time to set up a new system. Setting it up on the first day of a new project instead, before there is a single bug, is nearly free and pays off for the entire life of the project. The bugs you capture from day one, the habit you build early, and the chaos you avoid later all make day-one setup one of the highest-return decisions in a new project.
Set It Up Before You Have Bugs
It seems premature to set up bug tracking before you have any bugs, but that is exactly the point, doing it when the project is empty and calm is effortless, while doing it later under launch pressure is painful. On day one, setting up a tracker takes a few minutes and competes with nothing. At launch, it competes with a flood of reports and a hundred other fires. The cost of setup is lowest precisely when you have no bugs yet, so that is when to pay it.
Starting early also means you never have a period where bugs go uncaptured. From the very first bug you encounter in development, there is a place for it to go, so nothing is lost in the gap between 'we should set up tracking' and actually doing it, a gap that, started late, can swallow months of bugs into scattered notes and memory.
Build the Habit From the First Bug
Setting up tracking on day one lets the bug-tracking habit form alongside the project, rather than being grafted on after bad habits have set in. When logging a bug into the tracker is how you have always handled bugs on this project, it becomes automatic and effortless. When you instead spend months tracking bugs in your head or in scattered files and then try to switch to a real system, you are fighting established habits and migrating a mess. Early setup makes good habits the default.
Keep the initial setup lightweight so it does not become a barrier. You do not need an elaborate process on day one, just a place for bugs to land and a habit of putting them there. Bugnet is quick to set up at the start of a project, so from day one you have a tracker ready to receive both your own found bugs and, once there are players, their reports, all in one place that grows naturally with the project.
Reap the Benefits Across the Whole Project
Day-one bug tracking pays dividends for the entire life of the project. Through development, every bug you find is captured and nothing slips, so you reach feature-complete with a real picture of what is broken rather than a vague memory. At beta and launch, the system and the habit are already in place and battle-tested, so you face the report flood with infrastructure that already works instead of scrambling to set it up under fire. The day-one investment compounds at exactly the moments you most need it.
Critically, when you add the SDK early, you can capture bugs from your own testing and from playtesters from the start, building a history of issues and fixes across the project's whole development, not just its public life. By the time you launch, you have a mature tracking setup, an ingrained habit, and a complete bug history, all from a few minutes of setup on day one. Few decisions in a new project offer that return for so little upfront cost, which is why bug tracking belongs in your day-one setup alongside version control, not bolted on at launch.
Bug tracking is easiest to start before any bugs exist. Set it up day one alongside version control, not bolted on at launch.