Everything on Technical Debt Management

AI generates almost exclusively new code, with refactor rates dropping to near zero. This behavior risks accumulating technical debt rather than improving legacy systems.

Impact: Unmanaged AI usage can bloat codebases and increase long-term maintenance costs. Organizations must explicitly configure AI to prioritize refactoring and leveraging existing code paths.

— from 2026 Engineering Benchmark: AI Adoption vs. Impact Gap · Dev Interrupted· Mar 24, 2026