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brooks-debt

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UpdatedJune 20, 2026 at 17:24

Tech debt assessment that identifies, classifies, and prioritizes maintainability problems — helping teams build a refactoring roadmap — drawing on twelve classic engineering books. Triggers when: user asks about tech debt, refactoring priorities, what to clean up first, or asks "why is this so hard to change?", "what should we fix first?", or "how do I justify refactoring to management?". Do NOT trigger for: server health checks, HTTP /health endpoints, Kubernetes probes, database health, or application uptime — "health" in those contexts is infrastructure, not code quality. Also not for single-function refactoring questions.

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hyhmrright

hyhmrright/brooks-lint

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Software DevelopersComputer and Mathematical Occupations·SOC 15-1252

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SKILL.md

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name

brooks-debt

description

Brooks-Lint — Tech Debt Assessment

Setup

Read ../_shared/common.md for the Iron Law, Project Config, Report Template, and Health Score rules
Read ../_shared/source-coverage.md for book-level coverage, exceptions, and tradeoffs
Read ../_shared/decay-risks.md for symptom definitions and source attributions
Read debt-guide.md in this directory for the debt classification framework

Process

If the user has not described the codebase or pointed to specific areas: apply Auto Scope Detection from ../_shared/common.md to determine the assessment scope before proceeding.

Scan for all six decay risks (Step 1 of the guide); list every finding before scoring
Apply the Pain × Spread priority formula and classify debt intent (Steps 2–3 of the guide)
Group findings by decay risk (Step 4 of the guide)
Output using the Report Template from common.md, plus the Debt Summary Table

Mode line in report: Tech Debt Assessment

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Full-sweep mode: runs a unified analysis across all quality dimensions — code decay, architecture, tech debt, and test quality — then applies fixes directly to the codebase. Safe changes are auto-applied; risky changes are confirmed before execution. Drawing on twelve classic engineering books. Triggers when: user wants to "fix everything", "sweep the codebase", "auto-fix all issues", "clean up the whole project", or asks for a single command that both diagnoses and remediates quality problems. Do NOT trigger for: read-only audits or health reports where the user only wants findings without code changes; single-dimension reviews (use the focused skill instead: brooks-review / brooks-audit / brooks-debt / brooks-test); server health checks, HTTP /health endpoints, Kubernetes probes, database health, or application uptime.

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name

brooks-debt

description

Brooks-Lint — Tech Debt Assessment

Setup

Read ../_shared/common.md for the Iron Law, Project Config, Report Template, and Health Score rules
Read ../_shared/source-coverage.md for book-level coverage, exceptions, and tradeoffs
Read ../_shared/decay-risks.md for symptom definitions and source attributions
Read debt-guide.md in this directory for the debt classification framework

Process

If the user has not described the codebase or pointed to specific areas: apply Auto Scope Detection from ../_shared/common.md to determine the assessment scope before proceeding.

Scan for all six decay risks (Step 1 of the guide); list every finding before scoring
Apply the Pain × Spread priority formula and classify debt intent (Steps 2–3 of the guide)
Group findings by decay risk (Step 4 of the guide)
Output using the Report Template from common.md, plus the Debt Summary Table

Mode line in report: Tech Debt Assessment