We need an accounting system for cognitive debt

Software teams need a formal system to track "cognitive debt"—the mental burden from complex code, poor abstractions, and unclear logic. Like technical debt, it slows development and causes errors and burnout. The article calls for explicit measurement and management of cognitive load in codebases.

Background

- "Cognitive debt" is a term coined by the article's author (MikaeI) to describe the hidden mental cost of dealing with poorly-designed systems, confusing code, or unclear processes — analogous to "technical debt" in software engineering, which refers to the long-term cost of taking quick-and-dirty shortcuts in code.

Understand to participate

3.0

Simon Willison reflects on a talk by Geoffrey Litt at AIE, who argued that when collaborating with coding agents, developers must understand the code deeply enough to remain active participants in the creative process, avoiding cognitive debt from drifting understanding.

Understanding is the new bottleneck

2.5

In a July 2026 talk at the AI Engineer conference, Geoffrey Litt, a Design Engineer at Notion, argues that understanding code remains critically important even when using AI coding agents, presenting the idea that comprehension—not generation—has become the new bottleneck in software development.

We need an accounting system for cognitive debt

Background

Related stories

Understand to participate

Understanding is the new bottleneck

We need an accounting system for cognitive debt

Background

Related stories

Understand to participate

Understanding is the new bottleneck