cognitive-debt
3 articles
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.