---
name: tech-debt-b56fc321c300
version: 1
description: Identify, categorize, and prioritize technical debt. Trigger with "tech debt", "technical debt audit", "what should we refactor", "code health", or when the user asks about code quality, refactoring priorities, or maintenance backlog.
triggers:
  - "tech-debt"
  - "/tech-debt"
  - "identify"
  - "categorize"
  - "prioritize"
  - "technical"
  - "debt"
tools: []
mutating: false
priority: normal
source: "anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/engineering"
---
# Tech Debt Management

Systematically identify, categorize, and prioritize technical debt.

## Categories

| Type | Examples | Risk |
|------|----------|------|
| **Code debt** | Duplicated logic, poor abstractions, magic numbers | Bugs, slow development |
| **Architecture debt** | Monolith that should be split, wrong data store | Scaling limits |
| **Test debt** | Low coverage, flaky tests, missing integration tests | Regressions ship |
| **Dependency debt** | Outdated libraries, unmaintained dependencies | Security vulns |
| **Documentation debt** | Missing runbooks, outdated READMEs, tribal knowledge | Onboarding pain |
| **Infrastructure debt** | Manual deploys, no monitoring, no IaC | Incidents, slow recovery |

## Prioritization Framework

Score each item on:
- **Impact**: How much does it slow the team down? (1-5)
- **Risk**: What happens if we don't fix it? (1-5)
- **Effort**: How hard is the fix? (1-5, inverted — lower effort = higher priority)

Priority = (Impact + Risk) x (6 - Effort)

## Output

Produce a prioritized list with estimated effort, business justification for each item, and a phased remediation plan that can be done alongside feature work.


---
Source attribution: charlieviettq
Original project: https://github.com/charlieviettq/awesome-agent-skill/blob/c567ae426d55fa498e919fc0f5a37c582d5c7a2c/plugins/knowledge-work-engineering/skills/tech-debt/SKILL.md
License: MIT
License information: https://opensource.org/license/mit
Original upstream instructions; downloaded from Dave AI.

## Upstream license notice

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 charlieviettq

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.



# Dave AI resource metadata

Creator / publisher: charlieviettq
Original project: https://github.com/charlieviettq/awesome-agent-skill/blob/c567ae426d55fa498e919fc0f5a37c582d5c7a2c/plugins/knowledge-work-engineering/skills/tech-debt/SKILL.md
Attribution basis: Source repository record

Fields of work: Product Management, Development & Engineering
Roles: Product Manager, Technical Product Manager, Backend Developer, QA / Test Engineer, DevOps / SRE
Specialties: Specialty not specified
Tools: Tool not specified
Country applicability: Country not specified
Classification basis: Source category, role and specialization labels
Instruction SHA-256: b5067ebfab94d33a81a734ba12d9810cf0aaf0ce08afd561192b7404a8d916b7