Narrative debt forms when early language hardens into commitments before understanding stabilizes.
Stories become contracts.
Narrative debt doesn’t appear in logs.
It shows up when change becomes expensive before it becomes visible.
Language is treated as description.
In practice, it behaves like an interface.
Once others depend on it, changing it feels risky.
Narrative debt constrains:
It’s often misdiagnosed as:
The issue is meaning, not resolve.
Left unexamined, narrative debt compounds into brittle strategy and reputational inertia.
Narrative debt doesn’t slow systems.
It narrows them.