Troubleshooting

The `/tableau-agent-debug` Skill in Tableau Agent

The /tableau-agent-debug skill can help with most authoring issues that arise. Prompt the agent to explain and fix unexpected results or a missing element on your dashboard that you describe, or ask it to review logs to find errors.

Issues and Solutions

Agent claims success but nothing happened

→ Check for Tableau Studio error dialogs. If they are present then you can copy the error message, dismiss it, and paste the message into Tableau Agent to let the debug skill work on it. If an error dialog is not the issue, try describing what failed to the agent.

Template not binding to published datasource

→ Verify the datasource is connected before generating a visualization.

Agent using slow Python calls instead of native tool

→ If a process seems to be taking longer than expected, you can click on the agent’s thinking. If you suspect it is reinventing a Tableau native skill by writing a script to achieve that function, you can stop the agent and ask why it made that choice.

Using Logs for Debugging

Agent issues

Agent logs live under Documents/My Tableau Repository (Beta)/Tableau Agent/logs. Note the time of the failure, then use:

ask-ledger.jsonl

Contains each user ask, chat id, tools called, and which tools failed. Start here to find the failing tool for your ask.

Search for "is_error": true - grep '"is_error": true' ask-ledger.jsonl

desktop-mcp-<UTC date/time>.log

Contains MCP to Desktop tool calls: timeouts, blocking dialogs, and validation failures.

Search for error with "level":"warning" or "level":"error" to avoid benign debug lines:

grep -i '"level":"error"\|"level":"warning"\|awaiting-user\|Timeout\|validation' desktop-mcp-2026-08-19T18-00-00-000Z.log

tab-agent.log.<n>

Contains agent runtime errors and warnings. Read the lines nearest your timestamp.

Search for ERROR and/or WARNING - grep 'ERROR\|WARNING' tab-agent.log

web-mcp.log

Contains web and cloud MCP startup failures, such as certificate problems that keep server tools from initializing.

Search for fatal and/or certificate - grep -i 'fatal\|certificate' web-mcp.log

Viz or data source issues

log_<n>.txt

For viz or data source problems also check Desktop’s own log at Documents/My Tableau Repository (Beta)/Logs/log.txt (rotated as log_1.txt, log_2.txt), where connection and query failures are recorded.

Search on connectivity, |hyper, and/or |excp - grep -i 'connectivity\|hyper\|excp' "Documents/My Tableau Repository (Beta)/Logs/log.txt"

Reporting issues

If you are providing assets to someone assisting with troubleshooting, zip the relevant hour of desktop-mcp, current tab-agent logs, ask-ledger.jsonl, and web-mcp.log, and attach a workbook if the issue is content-related. If the issue seems to be with a viz or data source, include log.txt as well.