Yes, artifacts (PRs, tickets, commit messages) should have good context (documentation) associated with them, and yes, simplicity is very important, and yes, so

Yes, artifacts (PRs, tickets, commit messages) should have good context (documentation) associated with them, and yes, simplicity is very important, and yes, some tech debt is always going to be incurred, but most importantly, not understanding a "legacy" system that is already running in production, and then modifying it significantly, is not going to lead to good results. I think it's as simple as that.