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[ARTICLE · art-20798] src=dev.to pub= topic=ai-agents verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Agentic Tech Debt

GitClear's analysis of 211 million lines of code reveals that refactoring is declining while duplicated code is increasing, a pattern the project attributes to agentic tech debt. A developer created a plugin that logs every deferred decision, loose type, or punted choice as debt in a repository folder, while recording key decisions as Architecture Decision Records (ADRs). The tool passively tracks debt until the developer chooses to address it, then guides them through a research-backed resolution process, and works with Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, or any compatible agent skill.

read1 min publishedJun 3, 2026

The shortcuts your agent takes while coding are piling up.

GitClear's study of 211M lines shows the pattern: refactoring is dropping and duplicated code keeps climbing.

And if you've spent enough time coding with agents, you've felt this pain.

So I ran a study on ~20 years of tech-debt research, distilled the findings into a few commandments, and wired them into my agent loop as a plugin.

How it works: as your agent writes code, every deferral, a loose type, a punted decision gets logged to a folder in your repo as debt. Every key decision gets logged as an ADR.

It's a passive tracker until YOU decide to pay the debt down. Then the plugin walks you through it the research-backed way.

Works in Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, or anything you can drop an Agent Skill into.

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