A method and system of monitoring code after being compiled or assembled is provided. Software code instructions, such as a function preamble and/or a data manipulation instruction, are identified using debug information and then dynamically replaced with an instruction that will branch execution to a scratchpad buffer. A routine is inserted into the scratchpad buffer, and includes instruction(s) to generate output to a trace buffer. Subsequent instructions in the scratchpad may execute the replaced instruction(s) and branch back to the address of the program code immediately following the original address of the replaced instruction.