Understanding and Debugging Agent Behavior › Using Logs to Improve Your Agent
Michael BrenndoerferAugust 8, 20252 min read
AI Agent HandbookAll chapters Part 12 of 15Observability and Debugging - Peering Inside the Agent
Understanding and Debugging Agent Behavior › Using Logs to Improve Your AgentOne section · Sections in this chapter7 / 10 ↓
Sections in this chapter10
Logs help you fix errors and identify patterns that suggest improvements.
Performance Bottlenecks: If you see certain operations taking a long time, you might optimize them or cache results.
2025-11-10 19:00:00 - assistant - INFO - Searching memory for: previous conversations
2025-11-10 19:00:05 - assistant - INFO - Found 150 relevant items in memoryA five-second memory search is slow. You might add an index or limit the search scope to speed this up.
Unnecessary Tool Calls: If the agent frequently calls tools when it doesn't need to, you're wasting time and potentially money (if the tools cost per call).
2025-11-10 19:10:00 - assistant - INFO - User query: Hello!
2025-11-10 19:10:00 - assistant - INFO - Selected tool: search_engine
2025-11-10 19:10:01 - assistant - INFO - Search returned: [results]
2025-11-10 19:10:01 - assistant - INFO - Assistant response: Hello! How can I help you?The agent called the search engine for a simple greeting. That's wasteful. Improve the tool selection logic to avoid unnecessary calls.
Repeated Patterns: If you see the same type of error happening frequently, that's a signal to address it systematically rather than fixing individual instances.