Approaches for debugging include receiving by a hardware debug server, a high-level language (HLL) debugging command for setting a breakpoint in an HLL software specification. The hardware debug server translates the HLL debugging command into a hardware debugging command that specifies a condition of a hardware finite state machine that is representation of the software specification. The hardware debugging command is input to a simulator. The simulator adds a conditional breakpoint on the finite state machine in response to the hardware debugging command and executes a simulation of the finite state machine representation. Execution of the simulation is suspended in response to the detecting the condition in the finite state machine.