Article: Comprehension as an Architectural Characteristic: A System That Is Not Understood Cannot Evolve Safely

As AI commoditizes code output, system comprehension silently decays, creating cognitive debt that threatens safe architectural evolution. This article explores why human understanding must be treated as an essential architectural characteristic, offering actionable strategies, socio-technical metrics, and design checkpoints to preserve intent across modern engineering teams. By Jacobus Meintjes, Narayana Rengaswamy, Paul Katsande, Sureshbabu Bikki