TechDebt 2026
Sun 12 - Mon 13 April 2026 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
co-located with ICSE 2026
Sun 12 Apr 2026 12:10 - 12:20 at Oceania VII - Dominguinhos Chair(s): Ronnie de Souza Santos

As large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini become integrated into software development workflows, developers increasingly leave traces of AI involvement in their code comments. Among these, some comments explicitly acknowledge both the use of generative AI and the presence of technical shortcomings.

Analyzing 6,540 LLM-referencing code comments from public Python and JavaScript-based GitHub repositories (November 2022–July 2025), we identified 81 that also self-admit technical debt (SATD). Developers most often describe postponed testing, incomplete adaptation, and limited understanding of AI-generated code, suggesting that AI assistance affects both when and why technical debt emerges. We term GenAI-Induced Self-admitted Technical debt (GIST) as a proposed conceptual lens to describe recurring cases where developers incorporate AI-generated code while explicitly expressing uncertainty about its behavior or correctness.

Sun 12 Apr

Displayed time zone: Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil change

11:00 - 12:30
DominguinhosTechnical Papers / Journal First / Industry Track at Oceania VII
Chair(s): Ronnie de Souza Santos University of Calgary
11:00
20m
Talk
Beyond the Code: The Value of Practicing and Evaluating Technical Debt Management
Technical Papers
Mili Orucevic Visma, Maren Maritsdatter Kruke Visma software international AS, Antonio Martini University of Oslo, Norway
11:20
20m
Industry talk
Quality Feedback in the Agentic Loop: Using CodeHealth Guardrails to Agentic Code Improvement
Industry Track
A: Markus Borg CodeScene, A: Stuart Caborn loveholidays
11:40
20m
Talk
Investigating CI/CD-based Technical Debt Management in Open-source Projects
Technical Papers
João Paulo Biazotto University of Groningen and University of São Paulo, Daniel Feitosa University of Groningen, Paris Avgeriou University of Groningen, The Netherlands, Elisa Yumi Nakagawa University of São Paulo
12:00
10m
Talk
"That Developer Left the Project!": An Introduction and Case Study of Turnover Technical Debt
Technical Papers
Roberto Verdecchia University of Florence, Edoardo Sarri University of Florence, Enrico Vicario University of Florence
Pre-print
12:10
10m
Talk
"TODO: Fix the Mess Gemini Created": Towards Understanding GenAI-Induced Self-Admitted Technical DebtVirtual Attendance
Technical Papers
Abdullah Al Mujahid Missouri University of Science and Technology, Mia Mohammad Imran Missouri University of Science and Technology
Pre-print Media Attached File Attached
12:20
10m
Other
The Technical Debt Gamble: A Case Study on Technical Debt in a Large-Scale Industrial Microservice Architecture
Journal First
A: Klara Borowa Warsaw University of Technology, A: Roberto Verdecchia University of Florence
Link to publication Pre-print