CMind: An AI Agent for Localizing C Memory Bugs

TL;DR

CMind is an AI agent that localizes C memory bugs by mimicking human debugging steps, analyzing source code and bug reports to generate hypotheses about bug causes and locations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel AI approach that combines language models and human-inspired decision making for bug localization in C programs.

Findings

Successfully localizes memory bugs in C code

Mimics human debugging behavior

Integrates language models with guided analysis

Abstract

This demonstration paper presents CMind, an artificial intelligence agent for localizing C memory bugs. The novel aspect to CMind is that it follows steps that we observed human programmers perform during empirical study of those programmers finding memory bugs in C programs. The input to the tool is a C program's source code and a bug report describing the problem. The output is the tool's hypothesis about the reason for the bug and its location. CMind reads the bug report to find potential entry points to the program, then navigates the program's source code, analyzes that source code, and generates a hypothesis location and rationale that fit a template. The tool combines large language model reasoning with guided decision making we encoded to mimic human behavior. The video demonstration is available at https://youtu.be/_vVd0LRvVHI.