Documentation Debt
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
The accumulated cost of missing, outdated, or misleading documentation that makes systems harder to use, debug, or change. Documentation debt compounds quietly because teams often notice it only when onboarding, incidents, or handoffs go badly.
In plain English: The growing cost of bad or missing documentation.
Example: "They could live with the messy docs for months, but once three teams depended on the service the documentation debt became operationally expensive."