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Journal article
Faster Code, Deeper Debt? A Multivocal Literature Review on Technical Debt and Its Early Signs in LLM-Assisted Software Development
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Forthcoming
09 Jun 2026
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Abstract
With the rapid adoption of LLM-assisted coding, the need to manage the technical debt these systems introduce has become urgent. In this paper, we conduct a multivocal literature review of 104 sources (31 formal, 73 grey) to examine how LLM-assisted development contributes to technical debt and what strategies, metrics, and benchmarks exist to mitigate it. We find that LLMs often amplify traditional forms of technical debt, particularly code, design, and documentation debts, while also introducing new LLM-specific debts. Notably, we identify fast-integration debt, where rapidly generated code prioritizes speed over quality, triggering a domino effect that leads to governance debt and increased long-term maintenance costs. Additional emerging categories include prompt, ethical, data, and provenance debt, reflecting new challenges unique to LLM adoption. To address these, strategies suggested in the literature include human-in-the-loop frameworks, prompt engineering, and data quality alignment. In practice, tools such as SonarQube are commonly used to detect technical debt indicators, while research prototypes such as CodeSmellEval are emerging to assess how LLMs contribute to debts. However, no standardized benchmarks or LLM-specific metrics yet exist, leaving an important gap. Based on findings, we outline insights and future directions to ensure reliable integration of LLMs into software engineering workflows.
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Details
- Title
- Faster Code, Deeper Debt? A Multivocal Literature Review on Technical Debt and Its Early Signs in LLM-Assisted Software Development
- Creators
- Ramtin Ehsani (Corresponding Author) - Drexel University, College of Computing and InformaticsShriya Rawal - Drexel UniversityYuanfang Cai - Drexel University, Computer SciencePreetha Chatterjee - Drexel University, Computer Science
- Publication Details
- ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Forthcoming
- Publisher
- ACM
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Computer Science
- Other Identifier
- 991022189375104721