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Towards a Neural Debugger for Python (arxiv.org)
1 point by E-Reverance 207 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Instead of predicting every line of a Python program, these models act like a real debugger: set breakpoints, step into or over functions, and inspect or change variables. They reliably predicted both future outputs and earlier inputs from those actions, which line-by-line predictors cannot do.

Abstract

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.

Maximilian Beck, Jonas Gehring, Jannik Kossen, Gabriel Synnaeve
arXiv:2603.09951 · cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.SE · submitted Mar 10, 2026
abstract · pdf · html · 22 pages

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