Technical debtcompounds quietly
42% of engineering time goes to debt. By the time it shows up on the roadmap, it's already in the velocity metrics. Stripe's Developer Coefficient study surfaced this represents $85 billion in annual opportunity cost globally.
- Source: Stripe, "The Developer Coefficient," 2018.
Technical debt is a balance sheet problem
Technical debt consumes 40% of your IT budget.
Gartner 2025 research showed that technical debt consumes an estimated 40% of IT budgets. McKinsey showed that reducing debt frees up 50% more engineering time - and companies with low debt levels have 20% higher revenue growth.
Gartner, "Managing Technical Debt," 2025. McKinsey, 2022.91% of CTOs cite technical debt as their top strategic challenge.
STX Next's 2023 CTO survey showed that 91% of technology leaders identify technical debt as their primary strategic impediment. The compounding mechanism is well-documented: debt slows feature delivery, increases bug rates, raises onboarding cost.
STX Next, "CTO Survey: Technical Debt," 2023.The velocity-security tradeoff is false - but your team is living it.
Most engineering organizations treat security remediation as a velocity cost. Snyk's Forrester TEI 2025 showed that teams with automated remediation recovered 84,000 developer hours over three years. The tradeoff disappears when execution is autonomous.
Forrester Research, "TEI of Snyk," commissioned by Snyk, 2025.Close technical debt without adding sprint work
Debt reduction without sprint allocation
- Hyrax's Scan and Upgrade workflows work through accumulated vulnerability backlogs continuously - no sprint tickets required
- McKinsey's 50% velocity recovery from debt reduction is achievable only if debt actually decreases; Hyrax makes it decrease
- Every change ships as a verified PR with the [Hyrax] prefix - debt reduction is permanent and reviewable
Strategic debt visibility
- Every issue Hyrax surfaces and closes creates an audit record - debt reduction is measurable, not anecdotal
- Every PR carries the issue, the change plan, and the verification record - so you can see exactly where debt accumulates
- Board-level reporting: issue volume, closure rate, MTTR, and backlog trend are all derivable from Hyrax's PR history
Autonomous execution removes the tradeoff
- Engineers review and merge Hyrax PRs - they don't generate them
- Clear pricing: free to start, $30/user/mo with $30 of monthly credits per user
- 13-step verification before every merge: broken changes don't ship
What changes when the remediation queue closes
| Business metric | Manual remediation | Hyrax |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering velocity | Security issues consume sprint capacity | Issues execute autonomously - sprint capacity preserved |
| Technical debt ratio | Security debt accumulates between sprint cycles | Continuous upgrade execution means debt decreases consistently |
| Breach risk surface | Known unpatched vulnerabilities remain open 74+ days | Issues execute at introduction - exposure window closes |
| Audit readiness | Evidence assembly is manual at audit time | Every change produces a complete audit trail |
| AppSec ROI | Seats buy access; the work still costs sprint time | Every paid seat includes credits that pay for executed changes |
Common questions
from CTOs
We have a CISO and AppSec team. Why does Hyrax matter to the CTO?
Unresolved security debt shows up in your velocity metrics, not your security dashboard. Sprint time for SAST remediation, pipeline blocks from security gates, accumulated issues that slow senior engineers - those are engineering productivity costs.
What's the actual cost model?
Free gives every workspace full access with a $30 starter credit and $10/month ongoing. Paid is $30 per user per month, and each paid user gets $30/month of credits. Credits cover compute cost across audits, changes, and reviews.
How does Hyrax fit with existing AppSec tools?
Those tools are detection platforms. Hyrax is the remediation layer. If your issues queue isn't closing, Hyrax closes it. Many teams run Hyrax alongside their existing scanner.
What's the oversight model for autonomous code changes?
Hyrax cannot self-merge. Every change opens a PR with the [Hyrax] prefix; a human approves and merges. The policy that determines what executes autonomously versus surfaces for review is editable and version-controlled.