• Home
  • Search
  • ChatDBG: Augmenting Debugging with Large Language Models
  • Cite Icon3
  • https://doi.org/10.1145/3729355Copy DOI Icon

ChatDBG: Augmenting Debugging with Large Language Models

Show More
  • Abstract
  • Literature Map
  • References
  • Citations
  • Similar Papers
Abstract

Debugging is a critical but challenging task for programmers. This paper proposes ChatDBG, an AI-powered debugging assistant. ChatDBG integrates large language models (LLMs) to significantly enhance the capabilities and user-friendliness of conventional debuggers. ChatDBG lets programmers engage in a collaborative dialogue with the debugger, allowing them to pose complex questions about program state, perform root cause analysis for crashes or assertion failures, and explore open-ended queries like "why is x null?". To handle these queries, ChatDBG grants the LLM autonomy to "take the wheel": it can act as an independent agent capable of querying and controlling the debugger to navigate through stacks and inspect program state. It then reports its findings and yields back control to the programmer. By leveraging the real-world knowledge embedded in LLMs, ChatDBG can diagnose issues identifiable only through the use of domain-specific reasoning. Our ChatDBG prototype integrates with standard debuggers including LLDB and GDB for native code and Pdb for Python. Our evaluation across a diverse set of code, including C/C++ code with known bugs and a suite of Python code including standalone scripts and Jupyter notebooks, demonstrates that ChatDBG can successfully analyze root causes, explain bugs, and generate accurate fixes for a wide range of real-world errors. For the Python programs, a single query led to an actionable bug fix 67% of the time; one additional follow-up query increased the success rate to 85%. ChatDBG has seen rapid uptake; it has already been downloaded more than 75,000 times.

Similar Papers
  • Preprint Article

An AI-Copilot for JupyterLab for climate data analyses using FrevaGPT

  • Mar 15, 2025
  • Felix Oertel +5
  • Conference Article

AI-Enhanced TRIZ: Integrating 9 Windows Model with Large Language Models and Automatic Speech Recognition for Systemic Problem-Solving in Desertification Mitigation

  • Jan 01, 2025
  • Christopher Nikulin +2
  • Book Chapter

Systems and Tools to Use NLP and LLMs: Getting Started

  • Jan 01, 2026
  • Diana Garcia Quevedo +1
  • Research Article

Research on Root Cause Analysis Method for Certain Civil Aircraft Based on Ensemble Learning and Large Language Model Reasoning

  • Mar 12, 2026
  • Machines
  • Wenyou Du +3
  • Conference Article

Experiences and lessons from an anomaly root cause analysis in a large district cooling plant

  • Jan 01, 2018
  • AIP conference proceedings
  • Xiaoming Zhang +5
  • Research Article

A-088 Clinically Significant Errors Using the Diazyme Total Bile Acid Assay on the Roche c502 Analyzer: Investigating a Result Error Identifies a Novel Large-Scale Testing Error Caused by Reagent Carryover

  • Oct 02, 2024
  • Clinical Chemistry
  • L M Leonard +3
  • Research Article

Auto-Coding Collaborative Dialogue from Classrooms with Open LLMs Using Zero-Short Prompting

  • Dec 04, 2025
  • International Conference on AI Research
  • Wenting Sun +1
  • PDF
  • Abstract

ORION, a new method for root cause analysis of blood and body fluid exposures

  • Jun 16, 2015
  • Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control
  • C Bervas +4
  • Research Article
  • Citations2

UAV Accident Forensics via HFACS-LLM Reasoning: Low-Altitude Safety Insights

  • Oct 13, 2025
  • Drones
  • Yuqi Yan +2
  • Research Article

Development of Large Language Model Specialized into Microbiome Datasets: an Application of Self-Evaluation and Scoring Comparison with Conventional Natural Language Processing Markers.

  • Jan 26, 2026
  • Journal of microbiology and biotechnology
  • Chan Kyu Park +14
  • Research Article
  • Citations6

Machine Learning Based Anomaly Detection as an Emerging Trend in Telecommunications

  • Apr 28, 2020
  • Management:Journal of Sustainable Business and Management Solutions in Emerging Economies
  • Valentina Đorđević +2
  • PDF
  • Research Article
  • Citations6

Chatbot for the Return of Positive Genetic Screening Results for Hereditary Cancer Syndromes: a Prompt Engineering Study

  • Aug 29, 2024
  • Research Square
  • Emma Coen +7
  • Research Article
  • Citations1

Root Cause Analysis for Incident Reporting Cases of Radiological Technologists Based on Years of Experience

  • Jan 01, 2024
  • Japanese Journal of Radiological Technology
  • Ryu Mabuchi +2
  • Conference Article

Knowledge-Graph-Centric Architecture for Reliable Fault Diagnosis

  • Dec 15, 2025
  • Ziran Min +6
  • Research Article

Jupiter: Enhancing LLM Data Analysis Capabilities via Notebook and Inference-Time Value-Guided Search

  • Mar 14, 2026
  • Shuocheng Li +9
Cactus Communications logo

Copyright 2026 Cactus Communications. All rights reserved.