tech-debt
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.
Install / Use
npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill tech-debtInstalls into whichever agent you are using.
SKILL.md
Installable skill definition
Quality Score
Category
Development & EngineeringSupported Platforms
Tags
Our assessment of tech-debt
tech-debt scores 77/100 on our quality scale, 1778th of 2,855 Development & Engineering skills we index.
Its SKILL.md is 1.4 KB long, split into 4 sections and no code examples: moderately detailed.
With 25,526 GitHub stars, it is one of the more widely adopted skills in the catalogue.
Maintenance, license and trust
- The repository was last updated 3 days ago, so tech-debt is actively maintained.
- It is released under the Apache-2.0 license, a permissive license that allows use, modification and commercial use with attribution.
- Its trust signals score 100/100, with no cautions. These come from repository metadata, not a code audit — read the skill file before letting an agent act on it.
Safety scan
No issues foundOur scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands.
Automated pattern scan on 2026-09-28. It catches known dangerous patterns, not every risk — read a skill before letting an agent act on it.
tech-debt compared with similar skills
All 4 of these similar skills score higher than tech-debt; compare them before choosing.
| Skill | Score | Stars | Updated | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tech-debt (this skill)by anthropics | 77 | 25.5k | 3d ago | SKILL.md |
| ai-job-searchby MadsLorentzen | 100 | 44.2k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| claude-howtoby luongnv89 | 100 | 41.7k | 1d ago | CLAUDE.md |
| algorithmic-artby anthropics | 100 | 177.9k | 5d ago | SKILL.md |
| pptxby anthropics | 100 | 177.9k | 5d ago | SKILL.md |
Frequently asked questions
- How do I install tech-debt?
- Run
npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill tech-debt. The install tabs above show the steps for each supported agent. - Which AI agents does tech-debt work with?
- It is written for Universal, as a SKILL.md file. Other agents that read the same format can often use it too.
- Is tech-debt safe to use?
- Our scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands. It is Apache-2.0-licensed and scores 100/100 on trust signals. Skills are instructions an agent will follow, so read the file before installing it and do not approve commands you do not understand.
- Is tech-debt still maintained?
- The repository was last updated 3 days ago, so tech-debt is actively maintained.
Skill content
View source on GitHubname: tech-debt 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.
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.
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Languages
Trust signals
From repository metadata: license, adoption, age and documentation. Not a code audit — see the Safety scan above for what the skill file itself contains.