Understanding and Debugging Agent Behavior › A Systematic Debugging Approach

When your agent misbehaves, follow this systematic process to diagnose and fix the problem.

Step 1: Reproduce the Issue

Try to make the problem happen again with the same or similar input. If you can reproduce it consistently, you can test whether your fix works.

Step 2: Examine the Logs

Find the log entries for the problematic request. Read through them from start to finish, checking each decision point:

• Did the agent correctly identify what type of request this was?
• Did it choose the right tool (or correctly decide not to use a tool)?
• Did it retrieve the right information from memory?
• Did its reasoning steps make sense?
• Did any tools return errors or unexpected results?

Step 3: Identify the Root Cause

Based on the logs, pinpoint where things went wrong. Was it a bad decision early in the process that led to downstream problems? Was it a single reasoning step that made an error? Was it a tool that failed?

Step 4: Form a Hypothesis

Develop a theory about why the problem occurred. For example: "The agent chose the wrong tool because the tool descriptions are too vague" or "The reasoning failed because the agent tried to do complex math without using the calculator."

Step 5: Test a Fix

Make a change that should address the root cause. This might mean:

• Improving prompts to guide better decisions
• Adjusting the logic for tool selection
• Fixing how information is stored in or retrieved from memory
• Adding error handling for tool failures
• Encouraging the agent to use tools for calculations

Step 6: Verify the Fix

Run the same request again and check the logs. Did the agent behave correctly this time? Try a few variations to make sure the fix works generally, not just for that specific case.