Agentic Technical Debt

Formal Framework for Agentic Technical Debt and Stochastic Tax in AI Workflows

This paper introduces a formal model distinguishing two constructs in agentic AI deployments: Agentic Technical Debt (accumulated design and governance liability) and Stochastic Tax (recurring operating burden from probabilistic agents in business workflows). The framework provides measurement methods, simulation tools, and a dashboard expression grounded in operational data estimation. An accounts-payable simulation and companion spreadsheet illustrate practical application. The work targets both technical and managerial audiences seeking to quantify and govern agentic AI system costs.