[sheepmullet]

"I thought the whole point was we couldn't see enough of the picture to make a stable design."

While still technical debt it is not the type the article is talking about or using in the example.

FTA: "At this point the developers realize that the code is starting to get messy and the solution is refactoring it to have a decent permission system."

I.e. You are at the point where you realise you need a better design and know the rough solution. Do you keep putting band aids on your solution or do you properly refactor?