The examples use Stave as the concrete case. But the protocol applies to any system built with AI assistance faster than understanding could follow.
Cognitive Debt
You built something with AI. It works. It passes tests. Users can run it. Maybe after a few months — you can't fully explain how parts of it work. Because the code arrived faster than your mental model could absorb it.
Cognitive debt is the gap between what the system does and what you can explain, debug, change, and defend.
In traditional technical debt, the code is messy. In cognitive debt, the code might be clean — well-structured, passing CI, even well-commented — but your mental model of it is messy or non-existent. The debt isn't in the artifact. It's in you.
