technical-debt-assessment

name	technical-debt-assessment
description	Audits a codebase or architecture for technical debt. Identifies code smells, architectural anti-patterns, scalability risks, and maintenance burden. Outputs a prioritized debt registry with refactoring recommendations and effort estimates.
allowed-tools	Read
effort	medium

Technical Debt Assessment

When to activate

When taking over a system that's been in production for 6+ months, or when performance/reliability concerns emerge. Triggered by: postmortem after incident, customer complaint about speed/crashes, developer request for refactoring time, migration planning, or periodic health check (quarterly). Can be run on entire codebase or specific modules.

When NOT to use

Not for greenfield projects (there's no debt yet). Not as code review (that's line-level analysis). Not for performance optimization alone (use performance-tuning instead). Not if no access to code or architecture (request access first). Not if the system is already being decommissioned.

Audit Checklist

Code Quality

• Code duplication (DRY violations)
• Long methods/functions (>50 lines)
• God classes (>500 lines, >10 responsibilities)
• Tight coupling (high fan-in/fan-out)