cognitive-debt
4 articles
Should Humans Still Understand Agent-Written Code? Yes — But Not Just to Verify It
Geoffrey Litt asks a sharp question for the agent era: if agents can write and verify more code by themselves, why should humans still understand the code? His answer is that understanding is not only for verification. It is how humans keep participating.
Can't Understand AI-Generated Code? Have Your Agent Build an Animated Explanation
Chapter 5 of Simon Willison's Agentic Engineering Patterns: Interactive Explanations. Core thesis: instead of staring at AI-generated code trying to understand it, ask your agent to build an interactive animation that shows you how the algorithm works. Pay down cognitive debt visually.
Can't Understand Your AI-Written Code? Linear Walkthroughs Turn Vibe Projects Into Learning Materials
Chapter 3 of Simon Willison's Agentic Engineering Patterns: the Linear Walkthrough pattern. This technique transforms even vibe-coded toy projects into valuable learning resources. Core trick: make the agent use sed/grep/cat to fetch code snippets, preventing hallucination.
Cognitive Debt: AI Wrote All Your Code, But You Can't Understand Your Own System Anymore
Technical debt lives in code, cognitive debt in your brain. As AI writes 80% of code, system understanding drops to 20%. UVic's Margaret-Anne Storey, Simon Willison, & Martin Fowler confirm this isn't a hypothetical future—it's happening now.