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Debugging AINL graphs with enhanced diagnostics and the visualizer

v1.3.4 feature guide. All commands use ainl (or python -m cli.main).

Overview

Two new flags make it much easier to understand why a graph fails strict validation:

Flag Command What it does
--enhanced-diagnostics ainl check, ainl validate, scripts/validate_ainl.py Attaches graph_context (human description of where the error sits) and mermaid_snippet (1-hop Mermaid fragment) to each diagnostic
--highlight-errors ainl visualize Post-processes Mermaid output to style error nodes in red

Both are additive and default-off. --enhanced-diagnostics auto-enables when --strict is set.

Step 1 — Reproduce a strict compile error

Create a file with an unreachable node:

# bad_graph.ainl
S app core noop

L1:
  R core.ADD 2 3 ->result
  J result
  R core.SUB 9 1 ->dead   # unreachable after J

Run strict validation:

ainl check bad_graph.ainl --strict

You'll see a structured error. The exit code will be 1.

Step 2 — Add --enhanced-diagnostics for richer output

ainl check bad_graph.ainl --strict --enhanced-diagnostics

The JSON output now includes two new fields in each diagnostic object:

{
  "kind": "unreachable_node",
  "message": "...",
  "label_id": "L1",
  "node_id": "n3",
  "graph_context": "unreachable node 'n3' in label 'L1' (node appears after a terminal join — dead code path)",
  "mermaid_snippet": "graph TD\n    L1_n2[...] --> L1_n3[...]\n"
}

For machine-readable output, add --diagnostics-format json:

ainl check bad_graph.ainl --strict --enhanced-diagnostics --diagnostics-format json \
  | python3 -m json.tool

Via scripts/validate_ainl.py directly (same behavior):

python scripts/validate_ainl.py bad_graph.ainl --strict --enhanced-diagnostics \
  --diagnostics-format json

Step 3 — Visualize with error highlighting

--highlight-errors only applies when the compiled IR includes structured_diagnostics (the visualizer reads them from the IR and then post-processes the Mermaid).

Important caveat: if the file fails strict compilation (for example, a missing include), ainl visualize exits non-zero and prints structured diagnostics instead of Mermaid. That is correct behavior.

ainl visualize bad_graph.ainl --highlight-errors --output - > /tmp/bad_graph.mmd

The generated Mermaid file will contain lines like:

classDef errorstyle fill:#ffcccc,stroke:#f00
class L1_n3 errorstyle

Step 4 — Render a screenshot (optional)

If you have the mmdc CLI from @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli:

mmdc -i /tmp/bad_graph.mmd -o /tmp/bad_graph.png

Or render directly via AINL’s built-in image export (requires the local renderer dependencies used by ainl visualize in your environment):

ainl visualize bad_graph.ainl --output /tmp/bad_graph.png

Or paste the Mermaid output into mermaid.live to view it interactively. Error nodes will be highlighted in pink/red.

Tips

  • --enhanced-diagnostics is automatically active when --strict or --strict-reachability is used, so you get graph context by default in strict mode.
  • The mermaid_snippet field is a self-contained graph TD block showing the failing node plus its immediate predecessors/successors — paste it into any Mermaid renderer.
  • For CI, combine with --diagnostics-format json to parse graph_context in your error reporter.
  • If the secondary non-strict compile also fails (e.g. deeply broken source), graph_context and mermaid_snippet stay null — the primary diagnostic is still complete.

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