# AgentTrace: Causal Graph Tracing for Root Cause Analysis in Deployed Multi-Agent Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14688 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14688/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 9 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Software engineering coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/software-engineering-coding-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00352/) (2023)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debug](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05128/) (2023)
- [Exploring LLM-based Agents for Root Cause Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04123/) (2024)
- [Anomaly Detection and Failure Root Cause Analysis in (Micro)Service-Based Cloud Applications: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12378/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Temporary Authority, Permanent Effects: Commit-Time Authorization for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10487/) (2026)
- [TRAJDEBUG: Tracing Error Lifecycle to Identify Critical Failures in Long-Horizon Agent Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06346/) (2026)
- [Beyond Individual Intelligence: Surveying Collaboration, Failure Attribution, and Self-Evolution in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14892/) (2026)
- [How Much Coordination Gain Is Real? A Paired Noise-Floor Protocol for Multi-Agent LLM Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20695/) (2026)
- [AuditRepairBench: A Paired-Execution Trace Corpus for Evaluator-Channel Ranking Instability in Agent Repair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04624/) (2026)
- [Hearsay: Can an Auditor Trust the Record a Deployed Agent Harness Writes?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32495/) (2026)
- [MAADBench: The Refreshable Paradigm for Anomaly Detection in Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36556/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As multi-agent AI systems are increasingly deployed in real-world settings - from automated customer support to DevOps remediation - failures become harder to diagnose due to cascading effects, hidden dependencies, and long execution traces. We present AgentTrace, a lightweight causal tracing framework for post-hoc failure diagnosis in deployed multi-agent workflows. AgentTrace reconstructs causal graphs from execution logs, traces backward from error manifestations, and ranks candidate root causes using interpretable structural and positional signals - without requiring LLM inference at debugging time. Across a diverse benchmark of multi-agent failure scenarios designed to reflect common deployment patterns, AgentTrace localizes root causes with high accuracy and sub-second latency, significantly outperforming both heuristic and LLM-based baselines. Our results suggest that causal tracing provides a practical foundation for improving the reliability and trustworthiness of agentic systems in the wild.