Reading up on Addy Osmani

Intent debt—the missing externalized rationale for why a system is built—is the most expensive kind of debt because AI agents cannot generate it, and its cost compounds as teams rely on more agents.

Cognitive surrender—accepting AI output without independent judgment—accumulates comprehension debt, as studies show 73% accept wrong answers with rising confidence.

AI coding agents skip senior-engineer practices by default, so Addy Osmani created Agent Skills to encode workflows like specs, tests, and reviews as non-optional agent steps.

Addy Osmani argues that while AI agents now write 80% of code for early adopters, this shifts problems to "comprehension debt," where developers understand less of their own codebases.

Software engineering roles shift as AI speeds coding; juniors must become AI-proficient specialists while seniors maintain deep system knowledge.

Engineering success at Google depends more on navigating people, alignment, and ambiguity than on technical brilliance, according to 21 lessons from 14 years.

Lessons from 14 years at Google: novelty incurs debt, abstractions shift complexity, and clarity trumps cleverness.