AI Glossary

Technical debt

Also called tech debt

The extra work a codebase carries when code ships quicker or rougher than it should: until the code is reworked, every later change costs more, like interest on an unpaid loan. Ward Cunningham compared shipping first time code to going into debt in a 1992 OOPSLA experience report.

See also

  • AI slop

    Low quality content made with generative AI and put out with little human care or review, such as an article, an image or a block of code.

  • Test harness

    The stubs, drivers and test data set up to run software tests automatically: a test harness calls the code under test with chosen inputs and compares each result with the expected one.

  • Coding agent

    An AI agent built for software work: it reads a code project, edits files, runs commands and tests, and attempts to fix what fails.

Source: Ward Cunningham, The WyCash Portfolio Management System, OOPSLA experience report (1992) (opens in a new tab)

Cite this term.

CC BY 4.0, attribution required.

This term

Orbyt Labs, Technical debt (AI Glossary), Oct 18, 2026. https://www.orbytlabs.ai/orbyt-collective/glossary/technical-debt

The dataset (JSON)

Orbyt Labs Glossaries (Oct 19, 2026), https://www.orbytlabs.ai/glossary#dataset

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