GitHub Copilot CLI Diagnosed a Silent AI-Agent Bug Using Structured Execution Traces

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A full-stack developer tested whether GitHub Copilot CLI could identify an AI-agent failure using structured runtime traces rather than raw logs. The experiment used a controlled TypeScript fixture simulating a small project-help agent built with Next.js and MERN stack components. A subtle bug caused the formatter to read from the wrong optional field — 'content' instead of 'text' — which TypeScript did not flag, allowing the agent to run silently and return only a vague 'not enough context' response. The developer connected AgentInspect to GitHub Copilot CLI via a read-only MCP server, instrumenting key execution boundaries with step-level metadata to capture what happened between retrieval and generation. The test demonstrated that a coding assistant can meaningfully diagnose silent agent failures when given structured trace evidence rather than relying solely on stack traces or error messages.

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