How to Use a Coding Agent to Fix Production Bugs

Coding agents can debug production issues more effectively when given access to information beyond a local repository, including live error data, operational logs and metrics, external developer discussions, and evidence that a proposed fix works. The piece recommends connecting tools such as Sentry and Datadog through MCP to identify affected releases, users, stack traces, logs, and deployment-related changes while limiting access and tool scope to reduce noise. It also emphasizes closed-loop verification, using browser-driven end-to-end tests, screenshots, recordings, and explicit success criteria to demonstrate that a fix works rather than relying on an agent’s claim. For bugs caused by dependencies or recent ecosystem changes, Firecrawl’s developer index is presented as a way to search current GitHub issues, pull requests, documentation, and READMEs, helping agents determine whether a problem is external, find existing fixes, and evaluate newer library options. The central recommendation is to combine production observability, live external search, focused prompts, and human review so agents investigate real conditions and provide testable evidence instead of making plausible but unverified code changes.

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