> **tech-debt** — skill 39 of 200 in [anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins](https://skillsdocs.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins).
>
> Book (all skills, one file): https://skillsdocs.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins.md
> Machine manifest: https://skillsdocs.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json
> Install the book: `npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins`
> Upstream: https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/main/engineering/skills/tech-debt/SKILL.md @ `main`
> Raw bytes, no header: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/main/engineering/skills/tech-debt/SKILL.md
> Base for relative paths: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/main/engineering/skills/tech-debt/
> Licence: Apache-2.0 — https://spdx.org/licenses/Apache-2.0.html
>
> Content © its authors, served unmodified. Takedown: https://github.com/DreambaseAI/skillsdocs/issues/new?labels=takedown&title=Takedown+request

<!-- Verbatim upstream SKILL.md follows, YAML frontmatter included. -->

---
name: 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| **Dependency debt** | Outdated libraries, unmaintained dependencies | Security vulns |
| **Documentation debt** | Missing runbooks, outdated READMEs, tribal knowledge | Onboarding pain |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.