SANER 2026
Tue 17 - Fri 20 March 2026 Limassol, Cyprus

Self-admitted technical debt (SATD), referring to comments flagged by developers that explicitly acknowledge sub- optimal code or incomplete functionality, has received extensive attention in machine learning (ML) and traditional (Non-ML) software. However, little is known about how SATD manifests and evolves in contemporary Large Language Model (LLM)- based systems, whose architectures, workflows, and dependencies differ fundamentally from both traditional and pre-LLM ML software. In this paper, we conduct the first empirical study of SATD in the LLM era, replicating and extending prior work on ML technical debt to modern LLM-based systems. We compare SATD prevalence across LLM, ML, and non-ML repositories across a total of 477 repositories (159 per category). We perform survival analysis of SATD introduction and removal to understand the dynamics of technical debt across different development paradigms. Surprisingly, despite their architectural complexity, our results reveal that LLM repositories accumulate SATD at similar rates to ML systems (3.95% vs 4.10%). However, we observe that LLM repositories remain debt-free 2.4x longer than ML repositories (a median of 492 days vs. 204 days), and then start to accumulate technical debt rapidly. Moreover, our qualitative analysis of 377 SATD instances reveals three new forms of technical debt unique to LLM-based development that have not been reported in prior research: Model-Stack Workaround Debt, Model Dependency Debt, and Performance Optimization Debt. Finally, by mapping SATD to stages of the LLM development pipeline, we observe that debt concentrates significantly higher in the pretraining and deployment stages.

Wed 18 Mar

Displayed time zone: Athens change

11:00 - 12:30
Session 1A - Software Quality, Technical Debt, and Software EvolutionShort Papers and Posters Track / Registered Report Track / Journal First Track / Research Track / Reproducibility Studies and Negative Results (RENE) Track at Panorama
Chair(s): Kilian Müller Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
11:00
15m
Talk
Leveraging Commit-Size Context and Hyper Co-Change Graph Centralities for Defect Prediction
Research Track
Amit Kumar IIIT Allahabad, Hrishikesh Ethari IIIT Manipur, Sonali Agarwal Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad
11:15
15m
Talk
An empirical study on architectural smells through a pipeline for continuous technical debt assessment
Journal First Track
Matteo Bochicchio University of Milano-Bicocca, Darius Sas TXT Arcan, Alessandro Gilardi University of Milano-Bicocca, Francesca Arcelli Fontana University of Milano-Bicocca
11:30
15m
Talk
Binary and multi-class classification of Self-Admitted Technical Debt: How far can we go?
Journal First Track
Francesca Arcelli Fontana University of Milano-Bicocca, Juri Di Rocco University of L'Aquila, Davide Di Ruscio University of L'Aquila, Amleto Di Salle Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), Phuong T. Nguyen University of L’Aquila
11:45
15m
Talk
Using Small Language Models to Reverse-Engineer Machine Learning Pipelines Structures
Registered Report Track
Nicolas Lacroix Université Côte d'Azur, I3S, Mireille Blay-Fornarino Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, I3S, Sébastien Mosser McMaster University, Frederic Precioso Laboratoire I3S UMR UNS-CNRS 7271
12:00
15m
Talk
Self-Admitted Technical Debt in LLM Software: An Empirical Comparison with ML and Non-ML Software
Reproducibility Studies and Negative Results (RENE) Track
Niruthiha Selvanayagam Ecole de Technologie Supérieure, Taher A. Ghaleb Trent University, Manel Abdellatif École de Technologie Supérieure
12:15
7m
Talk
Larger Is Not Always Better: Leveraging Code Evolution for Comment Inconsistency Detection
Short Papers and Posters Track
Nguyen Hoang Vinh-Phong Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Anh M. T. Bui Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Phuong T. Nguyen University of L’Aquila
Pre-print
12:22
7m
Talk
Scala Mixed-Paradigm Maintainability Metrics
Short Papers and Posters Track
Ivo Broekhof Universiteit Twente, Rinse van Hees InfoSupport, Nhat University of Twente, Vadim Zaytsev University of Twente
File Attached