How do I install the Adk Debug skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add google/adk-debug in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

Is Adk Debug safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. Independent scanners report: SkillSpector: PASS, Skill Scanner: PASS. Capability flags: docs only. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Adk Debug?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Adk Debug free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free, and the skill stays under its author's original license.

Who published Adk Debug?

Google (@google) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Adk Debug by google — Agent Skill

Name: Adk Debug
Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Author: Google

Adk Debug

Diagnoses misbehaving ADK agents by inspecting sessions, events, tool calls, and the exact request that reached the model. Covers the `adk run` CLI and the `adk web` dev server with its session, trace, and debug HTTP endpoints. Use when an agent returns the wrong answer, ignores a tool or swallows a tool error, hangs, loops, emits raw JSON instead of calling tools, is not discovered by `adk web`, when a sub-agent cannot see the parent conversation, or when you need the LLM request/response, token counts, or logs for a run. Don't use for how ADK is designed internally (use `adk-architecture`), for building a new agent or workflow (use `adk-agent-builder`), for environment or dependency setup failures (use `adk-setup`), or for lint and style nits (use `adk-style`).

Google Updated Sep 9, 2026 14.4k repo stars

File contents

Debugging ADK agents

Two entry points. Default to adk run: one process, no server, and --jsonl output that pipes straight into grep or python3. Switch to adk web when you need the browser UI, a persisted session you can click through, or the trace endpoints that expose the exact LLM request.

First moves

Reproduce headlessly: adk run --jsonl {agent_dir} "{query}". Without --jsonl, adk run prints only text parts — tool calls and tool errors are invisible.
Read the log file. adk run writes to /tmp/agents_log/agent.latest.log and nothing to the terminal; adk web does the opposite. See logs-and-traces.md.
Match the symptom in failure-modes.md before reading source — most reports are one of a handful of known shapes.
If the text is fine but the routing is not, dump the events and read author, branch, nodeInfo.path, and actions — event-flow.md.
If the model itself misbehaved, read what it actually received from the call_llm span rather than guessing from the agent definition — logs-and-traces.md.

References

cli-run.md — adk run flags, the JSONL event shape, multi-turn and human-in-the-loop resume, exit codes, driving a Runner from Python.
web-api.md — starting adk web, listing and reading sessions over HTTP, posting test messages to /run_sse.
logs-and-traces.md — log levels and where each command writes them, the trace endpoints, span attributes, and the env vars that control whether prompts appear in spans.
failure-modes.md — ADK-specific symptoms with the cause and a concrete check for each.
event-flow.md — how an invocation becomes events, callback order, the event fields that matter, and where each stage lives in the source.

Ground rules

Leave sessions in place when you finish. The user may still want to open them in the web UI, and adk web has no undelete.
Delete any throwaway agent you created for a repro, unless the user asked to keep it.
Reach for a unit test in tests/unittests/ when the bug is inside one component, and for a sample under contributing/samples/ (see adk-sample-creator) when it only reproduces with runner, agent, and workflow wired together.

---name: adk-debugdescription: Diagnoses misbehaving ADK agents by inspecting sessions, events, tool calls, and the exact request that reached the model. Covers the `adk run` CLI and the `adk web` dev server with its session, trace, and debug HTTP endpoints. Use when an agent returns the wrong answer, ignores a tool or swallows a tool error, hangs, loops, emits raw JSON instead of calling tools, is not discovered by `adk web`, when a sub-agent cannot see the parent conversation, or when you need the LLM request/response, token counts, or logs for a run. Don't use for how ADK is designed internally (use `adk-architecture`), for building a new agent or workflow (use `adk-agent-builder`), for environment or dependency setup failures (use `adk-setup`), or for lint and style nits (use `adk-style`).--- # Debugging ADK agents Two entry points. Default to `adk run`: one process, no server, and `--jsonl` output that pipes straight into `grep` or `python3`. Switch to `adk web` when you need the browser UI, a persisted session you can click through, or the trace endpoints that expose the exact LLM request. ## First moves 1. Reproduce headlessly: `adk run --jsonl {agent_dir} "{query}"`. Without `--jsonl`, `adk run` prints only text parts — tool calls and tool errors are invisible. 2. Read the log file. `adk run` writes to `/tmp/agents_log/agent.latest.log` and nothing to the terminal; `adk web` does the opposite. See [logs-and-traces.md](references/logs-and-traces.md). 3. Match the symptom in [failure-modes.md](references/failure-modes.md) before reading source — most reports are one of a handful of known shapes. 4. If the text is fine but the routing is not, dump the events and read `author`, `branch`, `nodeInfo.path`, and `actions` — [event-flow.md](references/event-flow.md). 5. If the model itself misbehaved, read what it actually received from the `call_llm` span rather than guessing from the agent definition — [logs-and-traces.md](references/logs-and-traces.md). ## References - [cli-run.md](references/cli-run.md) — `adk run` flags, the JSONL event shape, multi-turn and human-in-the-loop resume, exit codes, driving a `Runner` from Python. - [web-api.md](references/web-api.md) — starting `adk web`, listing and reading sessions over HTTP, posting test messages to `/run_sse`. - [logs-and-traces.md](references/logs-and-traces.md) — log levels and where each command writes them, the trace endpoints, span attributes, and the env vars that control whether prompts appear in spans. - [failure-modes.md](references/failure-modes.md) — ADK-specific symptoms with the cause and a concrete check for each. - [event-flow.md](references/event-flow.md) — how an invocation becomes events, callback order, the event fields that matter, and where each stage lives in the source. ## Ground rules - Leave sessions in place when you finish. The user may still want to open them in the web UI, and `adk web` has no undelete. - Delete any throwaway agent you created for a repro, unless the user asked to keep it. - Reach for a unit test in `tests/unittests/` when the bug is inside one component, and for a sample under `contributing/samples/` (see `adk-sample-creator`) when it only reproduces with runner, agent, and workflow wired together.

Frequently asked questions