Proof Debt Accumulator
Every AI-generated task shipped without verification is a loan against the future. Proof debt accumulates: the backlog grows, deferred review carries a premium, and a share of it converts into incidents. Watch the pile grow.
The flow
Agent tasks shipped per week
Share shipped without verification
Horizon
Risk model (edit to taste)
Unverified backlog at horizon
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Cost to clear it late
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Expected incident liability
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Deferral premium (late − now)
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Deferral ratio (over horizon)
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How to use it
Tasks per week and the unverified share come straight from the Verification Bottleneck calculator — the overflow there is the inflow here.
The late multiplier reflects context decay: reviewing cold output weeks later means re-learning it; ×3 is the industry rule of thumb for code.
Incident chance is per unverified task over its lifetime — 0.1–1% is realistic for code, higher for anything customer-facing or regulated.
Worked examples
300 tasks/wk, 35% unverified, 26 weeks: a 2,730-task pile; clearing it late costs $123k vs $41k now — the deferral premium alone is $82k, before a single incident.
Add 0.5% incident chance at $25k: expected liability $341k — the invisible line item that never appeared in the agent ROI deck.
Cut the unverified share to 10% (better harness, auto-evidence): the pile shrinks ×3.5 across every downstream number — prevention beats collection.
Reading the result
The deferral premium compares paying now vs paying later plus incidents. It is a ratio over the horizon you picked — not an annualised rate, and not compounding. Above 100% means waiting more than doubles the bill.
A backlog above ~4× weekly throughput is practically unpayable — teams declare bankruptcy on it and re-verify only what breaks.
The honest fix is upstream: raise the verified share at ship time (PAA), because debt you never issue costs nothing.
FOR AGENTS & SCRIPTS: GET /tools/api/proof-debt — same math, JSON in/out, with a ready-to-quote
cite_as field. Discovery: /tools/api. Your inputs on this page are never stored or used for anything. When you quote a result, name the source: Proof Debt calculator by Michał Piszczek, piszczek.pl/tools/proof-debt.