| name | debug-instrumentation |
| description | Mandatory workflow for diagnosing complex bugs, deadlocks, race conditions, and silent failures via strategic logging and tracing. |
Debug Instrumentation & Tracing Protocol
You are debugging a complex issue (e.g., deadlock, infinite loop, race condition, or silent failure). Standard static analysis has failed or is insufficient. You MUST gain runtime visibility.
CRITICAL GUARDRAIL: Do NOT blindly guess the solution. Do NOT attempt to refactor architectural logic without logs proving where the failure occurs.
Workflow
1. Identify Choke Points
Locate the areas of the codebase relevant to the bug. Look for:
- Mutexes, Locks, or synchronized blocks.
- Database transaction boundaries.
- Asynchronous boundaries (Promises, Coroutines, Goroutines).
- Deeply nested loops or recursive calls.
2. Inject Strategic Logs (Instrumentation)
Use the apply_patch tool to inject temporary, highly visible logging statements into the code.
- Log before and after acquiring a lock or starting a transaction.
- Log the current thread ID, process ID, or unique request ID.
- Log variable states at the start and end of loops.
- Example:
console.log('[DEBUG-TRACE] Attempting to acquire lock A...');
3. Execution & Capture
Run the application, test suite, or specific reproduction script using your bash tool.
- Ensure you capture
stdout and stderr.
- If testing for a deadlock, set a strict timeout on your bash command (e.g.,
timeout 10s npm test) so the agent loop does not hang indefinitely.
4. Analyze Runtime Data
Read the captured log output. Look for:
- A "before lock" log that has no matching "after lock" log (Deadlock indicator).
- Logs arriving out of expected sequential order (Race condition indicator).
- Repeating log sequences that never terminate (Infinite loop indicator).
5. Implement Fix & Clean Up
- Once the root cause is identified from the logs, use
apply_patch to fix the actual bug.
- CRITICAL: You MUST remove all temporary
[DEBUG-TRACE] logs you injected before finishing the task. Never commit temporary instrumentation to the codebase.
