From AI Technical Debt to Agentic Technical Debt: A Systematic Mapping of Root Causes and Manifestations in Agentic AI Systems

arXiv:2608.01001 · cs.AI, cs.CR, cs.SE · Submitted 2026-08-02 · Read on arXiv

Muhammad Tukur, Hayatullahi B. Adeyemo, Tao Chen, Nour Ali, Anis Zarrad, Marco Agus, Rick Kazman, Rami Bahsoon

cs.AI, cs.CR, cs.SE

Submitted: 2026-08-02

Comments: 32 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Technical Debt — 164× in this paper
• Agentic AI — 131× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Agentic System — 57× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Artificial Intelligence — 20× in this paper
• Explainability — 17× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Accountability — 15× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Generative AI — 15× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-Agent System — 12× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Abstraction — 11× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Feedback Loop — 11× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-agent Collaboration — 10× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Consistency — 9× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Core — 8× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-agent Coordination — 7× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Trace — 7× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Entanglement — 6× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Robustness — 6× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Accuracy — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Adaptive Reasoning — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Clarity — 4× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Embeddings — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Interpretability — 4× in this paper · explained in 15 episodes
• Modularity — 4× in this paper · explained in 9 episodes
• Verification — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Hallucination — 3× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• International Conference on Software Engineering — 3× in this paper
• AI Agents — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference — 2× in this paper
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications — 2× in this paper
• Digital Twin — 2× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Failure Modes — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Feedback Mechanisms — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Generative Model — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Generative Models — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Human-in-the-loop — 2× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution — 2× in this paper
• Language Models (LLMs) — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-Agent Architecture — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Redundancy — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Agentic Framework — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Coherence — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Communication Overhead — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Computational Efficiency — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Contextual Awareness — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Energy Efficiency — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Foundation Model — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Foundation Models — 1× in this paper · explained in 8 episodes
• Knowledge Graph — 1× in this paper · explained in 8 episodes
• Knowledge graphs — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Large Language Model (LLM) — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Large Language Models (LLMs) — 1× in this paper · explained in 9 episodes
• Multiple Language Smells — 1× in this paper
• Papers — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Personalization — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Prompt Injection Attacks — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• RAG — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Reinforcement Learning — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Role Separation — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• State Management — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Structural Consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Sufficiency — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Systematic Bias — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Unwanted Debugging Code — 1× in this paper

Sources

• Foundations for Investigations of Agentic AI Systems from the Forensic Analysis of OpenClaw
• TRiSM for Agentic AI: A Review of Trust, Risk, and Security Management in LLM-based Agentic Multi-Agent Systems
• Looking Forward: Challenges and Opportunities in Agentic AI Reliability

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