Conversational Debugging
Coming Soon — V2.00: MCP integration is coming as part of Kubeshark V2.00. Read the announcement.
Day-to-day debugging gets faster when you can ask questions instead of writing queries.
The Problem
Developers spend significant time:
- Figuring out why their service isn’t receiving expected requests
- Understanding what data another service is actually sending
- Debugging integration issues between services
- Verifying that their changes work correctly in the cluster
- Comparing what’s documented vs. what’s actually happening
How MCP Helps
Ask debugging questions naturally:
Example prompts:
“Is my user-service receiving requests from the API gateway? Show me the last 10 requests.”
“What exactly is the notification-service sending to the email-provider? Show me the request body.”
“The frontend says it’s sending the right headers, but the backend disagrees. Show me what’s actually in the HTTP request.”
“Find all 4xx errors returned by my service in the last 30 minutes. What requests caused them?”
“My service calls the inventory API but gets empty responses. Show me the actual request and response.”
“Why is my service getting ‘connection refused’ errors to the database?”
What the AI Can Do
- Show actual request/response payloads
- Verify headers, query parameters, and body content
- Find errors and their corresponding requests
- Compare what’s sent vs. what’s received
- Filter traffic to/from specific pods or deployments
- Identify mismatches between expected and actual behavior
- Track retry attempts and their outcomes
- Show connection-level issues (TCP resets, timeouts)
Example Debugging Session
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Terminal - claude |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| > My webhook endpoint isn't receiving events from the payment provider. |
| What's going on? |
| |
| * Investigating webhook traffic |
| - Searching for traffic to webhook endpoints... |
| - Checking for payment provider traffic... |
| - Analyzing connection attempts... |
| |
| Found the issue: |
| |
| Payment provider IS sending webhooks, but they're failing: |
| |
| Last 5 webhook attempts (from 203.0.113.50 - Stripe IP): |
| +----------------------------------------------------------------+ |
| | Time | Endpoint | Status | Reason | |
| +------------+-----------------------+--------+-----------------+ |
| | 14:23:15 | /webhooks/payment | 415 | Unsupported | |
| | 14:18:22 | /webhooks/payment | 415 | Media Type | |
| | 14:13:30 | /webhooks/payment | 415 | | |
| | 14:08:45 | /webhooks/payment | 415 | | |
| | 14:03:52 | /webhooks/payment | 415 | | |
| +----------------------------------------------------------------+ |
| |
| Root cause: Content-Type mismatch |
| |
| Payment provider sends: |
| Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 |
| |
| Your endpoint expects: |
| Content-Type: application/json (exact match) |
| |
| The "; charset=utf-8" suffix is causing your framework to reject it. |
| |
| > Show me the full request that failed |
| |
| Request at 14:23:15 UTC: |
| |
| POST /webhooks/payment HTTP/1.1 |
| Host: api.yourcompany.com |
| Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 |
| Stripe-Signature: t=1642262595,v1=abc123... |
| Content-Length: 847 |
| |
| { |
| "id": "evt_1234567890", |
| "type": "payment_intent.succeeded", |
| "data": { |
| "object": { |
| "id": "pi_abcdef", |
| "amount": 2000, |
| "currency": "usd" |
| ... |
| } |
| } |
| } |
| |
| Response: 415 Unsupported Media Type |
| Body: {"error": "Content-Type must be application/json"} |
| |
| > _ |
| |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+Common Debugging Scenarios
| Issue | What to Ask |
|---|---|
| Not receiving requests | “Is my service receiving any traffic? Show me recent requests.” |
| Wrong response | “What exactly is service X returning for endpoint Y?” |
| Header issues | “Show me all headers being sent to my endpoint” |
| Payload mismatch | “Compare what’s sent vs. what’s received” |
| Connection errors | “Why am I getting connection refused/reset errors?” |
| Auth failures | “What auth headers are being sent? Are they valid?” |
| Timeout issues | “Which requests are timing out and how long do they take?” |
What’s Next
- AI Use Cases — Common scenarios for AI-powered analysis
- Autonomous Development — Verify code in local cluster
- MCP in Action — See a complete investigation example