---
name: tech-debt-tracker
description: Scan codebases for technical debt, score severity, track trends, and generate prioritized remediation plans.
---

# Tech Debt Tracker

**Tier**: POWERFUL 🔥  
**Category**: Engineering Process Automation  
**Expertise**: Code Quality, Technical Debt Management, Software Engineering

## Overview

Tech debt is one of the most insidious challenges in software development - it compounds over time, slowing down development velocity, increasing maintenance costs, and reducing code quality. This skill provides a comprehensive framework for identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, and tracking technical debt across codebases.

Tech debt isn't just about messy code - it encompasses architectural shortcuts, missing tests, outdated dependencies, documentation gaps, and infrastructure compromises. Like financial debt, it accrues "interest" through increased development time, higher bug rates, and reduced team velocity.

## What This Skill Provides

This skill offers three interconnected tools that form a complete tech debt management system:

1. **Debt Scanner** - Automatically identifies tech debt signals in your codebase
2. **Debt Prioritizer** - Analyzes and prioritizes debt items using cost-of-delay frameworks
3. **Debt Dashboard** - Tracks debt trends over time and provides executive reporting

Together, these tools enable engineering teams to make data-driven decisions about tech debt, balancing new feature development with maintenance work.

## Quick Start — scan → prioritize → dashboard

All paths relative to this skill folder. The scanner's JSON output feeds the prioritizer directly; dated inventory snapshots feed the dashboard.

### 1. Scan the codebase

```bash
python3 scripts/debt_scanner.py /path/to/codebase --format json --output debt_inventory.json
```

Emits `debt_inventory.json` with `scan_metadata`, `summary`, `debt_items[]`, `file_statistics`, and `recommendations`. Report the `summary` counts to the user. (Dry run: `assets/sample_codebase`.)

### 2. Prioritize the backlog

```bash
python3 scripts/debt_prioritizer.py debt_inventory.json --framework wsjf --team-size 6 --sprint-capacity 20 --format json --output debt_priorities.json
```

Frameworks: `cost_of_delay` (default), `wsjf`, `rice`. Output contains `prioritized_backlog` (work top-down), `sprint_allocation` (paste into sprint planning), and `insights`.

### 3. Track trends over time

Keep dated snapshots (`debt_YYYY-MM-DD.json`), then:

```bash
python3 scripts/debt_dashboard.py --input-dir snapshots/ --period monthly --format both --output debt_dashboard
```

Or pass files explicitly (samples: `assets/historical_debt_2024-01-15.json assets/historical_debt_2024-02-01.json`). The dashboard reports trend direction and executive-ready summaries — use it to verify a cleanup sprint actually reduced debt.

### Verification loop

After a remediation sprint: re-run step 1, re-run step 3 with the new snapshot, and assert the targeted categories' counts dropped. A cleanup that doesn't move the dashboard is rework, not debt paydown.

## Technical Debt Classification Framework
→ See references/debt-frameworks.md for details (also: references/debt-classification-taxonomy.md, references/prioritization-framework.md, references/stakeholder-communication-templates.md)

## Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

### 1. Analysis Paralysis
**Problem**: Spending too much time analyzing debt instead of fixing it.
**Solution**: Set time limits for analysis, use "good enough" scoring for most items.

### 2. Perfectionism
**Problem**: Trying to eliminate all debt instead of managing it.
**Solution**: Focus on high-impact debt, accept that some debt is acceptable.

### 3. Ignoring Business Context
**Problem**: Prioritizing technical elegance over business value.
**Solution**: Always tie debt work to business outcomes and customer impact.

### 4. Inconsistent Application
**Problem**: Some teams adopt practices while others ignore them.
**Solution**: Make debt tracking part of standard development workflow.

### 5. Tool Over-Engineering
**Problem**: Building complex debt management systems that nobody uses.
**Solution**: Start simple, iterate based on actual usage patterns.

Technical debt management is not just about writing better code - it's about creating sustainable development practices that balance short-term delivery pressure with long-term system health. Use these tools and frameworks to make informed decisions about when and how to invest in debt reduction.