Reading up on Margaret-Anne Storey

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.

Excessive reliance on AI coding tools creates comprehension debt—a growing gap between code volume and human understanding—that erodes system knowledge and eventually must be paid with interest.

Nate Meyvis argues that cognitive debt in AI-generated codebases is not inherently worse than in traditional codebases, and AI can help mitigate it.