Technical-Debt

Comprehension Debt: When Your Team Can't Explain Its Own Code

Technical debt is a concept every engineering leader understands. You take a shortcut now, knowing you’ll need to come back and fix it later. The debt is visible: you can point to the code, explain what’s wrong with it, and estimate the cost of fixing it.

AI-generated code is introducing something different—and arguably worse. Researchers have started calling it “comprehension debt”: shipping code that works but that nobody on your team can fully explain.