BobGuard: Evidence-Driven Incident Debugging

BobGuard addresses a common debugging bottleneck: when a production incident occurs, developers must manually correlate logs, stack traces, source code, deployment history, and runbooks before they can identify the cause and safely prepare a fix. This context switching slows diagnosis and increases the risk of incomplete fixes and repeated work. Our prototype uses IBM Bob 2.0 to guide an evidence-driven incident workflow. A developer provides a reproducible incident and its supporting project documents. In Agent mode, Bob investigates the code and evidence, coordinates independent analysis tasks in parallel where supported, and produces a root-cause explanation tied to specific files, log entries, and operational guidance. The workflow then verifies a proposed fix with a regression test and creates an incident and release-readiness report covering test results, security findings, rollback steps, and remaining risks. A small policy filter demonstrates redaction of selected test-secret patterns in the report; it is intentionally presented as a limited control, not a guarantee of complete data protection. The target users are developers and small engineering or operations teams responsible for diagnosing and resolving application incidents. They interact with BobGuard by supplying an incident, reviewing Bob’s cited findings, checking the proposed change and test results, and using the report to inform release decisions. BobGuard’s distinctive idea is to make the debugging process—not just code generation—observable and verifiable. It combines document understanding, coordinated investigation, regression testing, and release communication in one workflow, while distinguishing verified results from simulations or unavailable capabilities. We evaluate its impact by comparing the assisted workflow with a manual baseline, tracking diagnosis time, manual steps, first-fix test success, and rework rather than claiming unmeasured productivity gains.