Towards a Neural Debugger for Python
Training large language models (LLMs) on Python execution traces grounds them in code execution and enables the line-by-line execution prediction of whole Python programs, effectively turning them into neural interpreters (FAIR CodeGen Team et al., 2025). However, developers rarely execute programs step by step; instead, they use debuggers to stop execution at certain breakpoints and step through relevant portions only while inspecting or modifying program variables. Existing neural interpreter approaches lack such interactive control. To address this limitation, we introduce neural debuggers: language models that emulate traditional debuggers, supporting operations such as stepping into, over, or out of functions, as well as setting breakpoints at specific source lines. We show that neural debuggers -- obtained via fine-tuning large LLMs or pre-training smaller models from scratch -- can reliably model both forward execution (predicting future states and outputs) and inverse execution (inferring prior states or inputs) conditioned on debugger actions. Evaluated on CruxEval, our models achieve strong performance on both output and input prediction tasks, demonstrating robust conditional execution modeling. Our work takes first steps towards future agentic coding systems in which neural debuggers serve as a world model for simulated debugging environments, providing execution feedback or enabling agents to interact with real debugging tools. This capability lays the foundation for more powerful code generation, program understanding, and automated debugging.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Tasks
Code GenerationSimilar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
ChatDBG: Augmenting Debugging with Large Language Models
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 …
C++ codeNavigateWorld KnowledgeFrom Code to Correctness: Closing the Last Mile of Code Generation with Hierarchical Debugging
While large language models have made significant strides in code generation, the pass rate of the generated code is bottlenecked on subtle errors, often requiring human intervention to pass tests, especially for complex…
Auto DebuggingBug fixingCode GenerationHumanEval+1Debug2Fix: Can Interactive Debugging Help Coding Agents Fix More Bugs?
While significant progress has been made in automating various aspects of software development through coding agents, there is still significant room for improvement in their bug fixing capabilities. Debugging and invest…
LM-Debugger: An Interactive Tool for Inspection and Intervention in Transformer-Based Language Models
The opaque nature and unexplained behavior of transformer-based language models (LMs) have spurred a wide interest in interpreting their predictions. However, current interpretation methods mostly focus on probing models…
PredictionVDebugger: Harnessing Execution Feedback for Debugging Visual Programs
Visual programs are executable code generated by large language models to address visual reasoning problems. They decompose complex questions into multiple reasoning steps and invoke specialized models for each step to s…
Visual Reasoning