Do Coding Agents Still Need a Debugger? Frontier-Model-Based Fault Localization at the Accuracy Ceiling

Christoph Daxerer, Johann Glock, Christian Macho, Rudolf Ramler, Martin Pinzger +1

Background: To localize a fault, a coding agent can reason from source code alone or use debugger assistance by running the program and stepping through it in an interactive debugger. While earlier agents struggled with static execution tracing and debugger operation, frontier LLMs have improved at both. Objective: We evaluate how accurately coding agents localize faults without tools across original and transformed programs, how much debugger assistance improves accuracy and at what cost, and how agents use it when optional. Methods: We seed 610 single-line faults into 144 LeetCodeDataset solutions and rewrite each faulty program with five recipes of behavior-preserving transformations. Agents based on Sol 6.1, Luna 6, and Qwen 3.8 localize each fault with no, optional, or encouraged debugger assistance. Results: Without tools, the agents localized 98.2 to 99.9% of faults in original and 96.7 to 99.9% in transformed programs, losing accuracy mainly where recipes restructured loops and conditions. Encouraged assistance removed 63% and 61% of Luna 6's and Qwen 3.8's remaining transformed errors (+2.1 and +1.3 percentage points) at 14.7 to 27.0 times the token use, while Sol 6.1…