Use when reworking a change to prevent tech debt, or auditing existing debt to categorize, score, and prioritize the refactor backlog.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Tech Debt
## Overview
Two complementary stances on technical debt, picked apart by the router in this file:
- **Mode A — Prevent:** while you're *making a change*, rework it toward the intended end state. Delete the dead compatibility path instead of preserving it.
- **Mode B — Triage:** while you're *assessing existing code*, categorize, score, and prioritize the debt into a remediation plan.
They run at different points in a debt's lifecycle: prevent when writing, triage when planning. Triage output feeds back into prevent, one item at a time.
## When to use
Use Mode A when:
- You are implementing, finishing, or reviewing a feature / fix / refactor and the user wants the change clean.
- You're about to keep a fallback, alias, mode flag, or wrapper "just in case" — check it has a caller first.
- The user says "do this properly", "no bandaids", "zero tech debt", or "don't leave a mess".
Use Mode B when:
- The user asks for a tech-debt audit, code-health review, or "what should we refactor?"
- The user wants to prioritize a maintenance / refactor backlog or roadmap.
- Debt has accumulated and nobody is sure what to fix first.
**When NOT to use:**
…
The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260806.2b93f5a, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_2u4ymaes76di4a7g
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=secondsky/claude-skills/tech-debt
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/1fab8014b45c972b358202c239aa7f78e765dde7d03bc663a86d5a9d402e6979
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