Skills anthropics knowledge-work-plugins
tech-debt
- Use it when:
- You want a tech debt audit, or to decide what to refactor first.
- It does:
- Sorts debt into code, architecture, test, dependency, documentation and infrastructure debt, and scores each item 1 to 5 on impact, risk and effort.
- Ranks by:
- (impact + risk) × (6 − effort), so cheap fixes of costly problems rise to the top.
- You get:
- A prioritized list with effort estimates and a business case per item, and a phased plan to do alongside feature work.
- Part of:
- The engineering plugin of Anthropic's knowledge-work plugins.
TL;DR
A short framework from the engineering plugin of Anthropic's knowledge-work plugins. It names six kinds of technical debt, each with examples and the risk it carries: code debt such as duplicated logic and magic numbers causes bugs and slows development; architecture debt such as a monolith that should be split limits scaling; test debt such as flaky tests lets regressions ship; dependency debt such as unmaintained libraries brings security holes; documentation debt such as missing runbooks makes onboarding painful; infrastructure debt such as manual deploys and no monitoring leads to incidents and slow recovery. Each item is scored from 1 to 5 on how much it slows the team, what happens if it isn't fixed, and how hard the fix is, then ranked by (impact + risk) × (6 − effort). The output is a prioritized list with estimated effort and a business justification for each item, plus a phased remediation plan meant to run alongside feature work. It gives no steps for finding debt in a codebase.
Summarizes the skill at ab4cb1c.
npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill tech-debt skills.sh pageSource on GitHubAll skills from anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
- Total Downloads
- 6,600 on skills.sh, Nov 9, 2026
- Repo stars
- 35,234 anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
- First seen
- Feb 24, 2026 on skills.sh
Weekly values
| Week to | Installs |
|---|---|
| Sep 21 | 115 |
| Sep 28 | 96 |
| Oct 5 | 79 |
| Oct 12 | 106 |
| Oct 19 | 109 |
| Oct 26 | 103 |
| Nov 2 | 84 |
| Nov 9 | 89 |
| Category |
Test-first work, implementation from specs, git hygiene and scope control. Everything for building software: planning, coding, debugging, design, frameworks, cloud, agents and skills. |
|---|---|
| Type |
Knowledge and rules the agent applies while it works: best practices, design principles, API references. |
| Effect |
Adds no side effects of its own. It shapes how the agent thinks, writes or reviews. Guidelines and routers are always effect:none, even when the task they support edits code. |
| Needs |
Instructions only. Works in any agent that supports skills. |
| Publisher |
A verified publisher on skills.sh, or the company or maintainer behind the product the skill operates. |
| Topics |
SKILL.md
From anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins at ab4cb1c. Checked daily, last changed Nov 6, 2026.
Frontmatter
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.