File Tech Debt

---
name: file-tech-debt
description: File a new tech-debt GitHub issue for an out-of-scope code-review finding, building the dedup key, checking for an existing open or declined-closed match, and only if none exists, creating the issue with the right labels and touching the debt-count staleness sentinel. Trigger on natural-language asks like "file a tech-debt issue", "record this as tech-debt", "open a tech-debt issue for this out-of-scope finding", or "file this finding as debt". Do NOT trigger on draining, fixing, listing, or prioritizing existing debt (that's `/gaia-debt`), nor on general "clean up the code" or "fix this bug" asks that aren't about filing a new tracked issue.
---

# File a tech-debt issue

This skill is the single source of truth for turning one out-of-scope finding (a real problem spotted while reviewing something else, and therefore not fixed in place) into a durable, deduplicated GitHub issue. It covers building the key, checking for a prior match, filing when there is none, and nudging the debt-count display to refresh. It does not decide *which* findings are out-of-scope, does not classify security-sensitivity, and does not fix anything, it only files.

**Callers own their own bookkeeping around this recipe.** Some callers record their own disposition-ledger entry and gate their own downstream state on it after filing succeeds; others file and stop. That bookkeeping is caller-specific and lives in the caller, not here. Follow the steps below exactly as written; do not invent a bookkeeping record, a completion flag, or a run-tracking step of your own on top of them, that would duplicate (or fight with) whatever the caller already does.

## 1. Build the dedup key

Every filed issue's body carries exactly one dedup-key line: a single HTML comment, byte-for-byte in this form:

```
<!-- gaia-debt-key: v1 class=<finding_class> path=<repo-relative-posix-path> line=<integer> -->
```

- `v1` is the schema version. Bump it only for a breaking change to the key's shape, not for routine use.
- `<finding_class>` is the finding's seeded class, or `holistic/unclassified` when the finding maps to no seeded class.
- `<path>` is a repo-relative POSIX path (forward slashes, never an absolute machine path).
- `<line>` is a plain integer.

This line is what every later step (dedup, re-filing checks, any caller-side ledger) matches against, so build it first and keep it verbatim in the body you construct in step 4.

## 2. Check for an existing match (dedup)

**Never rely on `gh`'s full-text search.** GitHub's search tokenizes on `/ : @`, so it cannot reliably match a key containing those characters. Query and match locally instead, and match on **the parsed `path=` and `line=` fields alone, ignoring `class=`**: a finding reclassified from `holistic/unclassified` to a seeded class (or the reverse) still carries the same `path=`+`line=` and must resolve to the same issue, not a new one.

1. `gh issue list --label tech-debt --state open --limit 1000 --json number,title,body`. For each issue's `gaia-debt-key` comment, parse out its `path=` and `line=` fields and compare them against the finding's own path and line: `path=` as a string, `line=` as a parsed integer, so `line=4` never matches `line=42`. Two keys equal on both fields are the same finding regardless of what `class=` either one carries.
2. Also check `--state closed` with the same `--limit 1000`: the same path+line comparison on a closed issue that carries the `wontfix` label (or was closed as not-planned) means the finding was **declined**, not merely resolved. Do not re-file it.
3. Keyless fallback for issues a human filed by hand (no machine key present): scan open `tech-debt` issue bodies for the bare `<path>:<line>` substring. Anchor the match so the line number is followed by a non-digit or end-of-string, otherwise `foo.ts:4` false-matches a sibling `foo.ts:42`. This is the same path+line identity as 1 and 2, sourced from a bare-text scan instead of a parsed key; a hit here suppresses re-filing even with no key line at all.

On any match (1, 2, or 3), hand back to the caller the **matched issue's number**, its **open/closed state**, and, when the match came from a parsed key (1 or 2), that key's **existing verbatim inner key** (`v1 class=… path=… line=…`). This recipe records nothing itself; callers own their bookkeeping (see above).

Accepted tradeoff: two genuinely distinct findings that land on the exact same `path:line` with different root-cause classes collapse to one issue under path+line dedup. This is the same residual risk the keyless `path:line` fallback already accepted; matching on path+line alone extends it to the machine-keyed case too.

## 3. Idempotency: skip if a match exists

If step 2 found a matching open issue, or a declined-closed one, stop, do not file. The finding already has a disposition; re-filing would create a duplicate. For an open match, the caller records the matched issue's number and its existing inner key (both returned by step 2) in its own bookkeeping, not a freshly-built key that may carry a different `class=`. For a declined-closed match, the caller adds no bookkeeping entry, exactly as an unmatched-skip is today.

## 4. Otherwise, file the issue

If no match exists:

1. Create the labels idempotently first (step 6), a pre-existing label is not an error.
2. Build the full issue body (step 5) in a gitignored body-file, not inline. Give the file a per-run-unique name under `.gaia/local/audit/` (for example `.gaia/local/audit/issue-body-<something-unique>.md`). The name must be unique because the create-and-cleanup sub-step below deletes it: two runs sharing one fixed name (CI plus a local run, the same pair sub-step 3 below guards against) would race, and one run's cleanup would delete the other's in-flight body out from under it.
3. Re-check the dedup query from step 2 immediately before creating, this shrinks the race window where a concurrent run (CI plus a local run, for instance) files the same finding twice. It is the same path+line matching basis as step 2, so a reclassification that lands between your first check and now still resolves to the already-open issue. Prefer a search-or-update path over a blind create when your environment supports it.
4. **Check the metadata before creating, and do not create on a finding.** Pass the exact label set the create call is about to carry, comma-separated, together with the body file built in sub-step 2:

   ```bash
   # Graded filing, when a grade is in hand:
   bash .gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh --pre-file \
     --labels "tech-debt,severity:<tier>,handler:<class>,difficulty:<grade>" \
     --body-file "$body_file"

   # Ungraded filing, when no grade is available:
   bash .gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh --pre-file \
     --labels "tech-debt,severity:<tier>,handler:<class>" \
     --body-file "$body_file"
   ```

<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->
   On the GAIA maintainer repository both `--labels` strings also carry
   `surface:<side>`; see the note under sub-step 5. Omitting it there fails this
   very check, which gates on the `surface:` count.

<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->
   Two forms, matching sub-step 5's two `gh issue create` forms exactly. The ungraded form **drops the `difficulty:` entry** rather than passing it empty or with the placeholder still in it, for the same reason the create call does. The check rejects both of those, correctly: an unfilled placeholder is the shape an omitted grade most often arrives in, and letting it through would file the literal text as a label.

   Exit `0` is clean, `1` names one finding per line, `2` is a usage or environment error. On `1`, fix the label set or the body and re-run; do not file. On `2`, the check itself could not run: report that and do not treat it as a pass.

   **Why this blocks rather than advises.** Every rule the check enforces was already written in the prose above before the check existed, and every one of them was violated anyway. The label set is the one part of a filing that no later step re-reads, so a mistake there is silent until a drainer trips over it weeks later, by which time the code that would have justified the right grade has moved. The check reads no network and needs no `gh`, so this gate costs one local call and cannot fail for a reason outside the filing.

   **What it does not check.** It verifies the label vocabulary, the counts, and the key's shape. It cannot verify that the grade you chose is the grade the rubric gives: whether a fix carries a design decision is a judgment about code, and a passing check is not evidence that step 7 was applied honestly. The mechanical half is enforced here; the rubric half stays yours.

5. Create the issue with the form that matches whether a grade is available, then delete the body file **in a second, separate Bash tool call**. A filing that has a difficulty grade in hand (step 7) uses the graded form; a filing with no grade drops the `--label difficulty:<grade>` flag entirely rather than passing it empty or with a placeholder:

```bash
body_file=.gaia/local/audit/issue-body-<something-unique>.md

# Graded filing, when a grade is in hand:
gh issue create --label tech-debt --label severity:<tier> --label handler:<class> --label difficulty:<grade> --body-file "$body_file"

# Ungraded filing, when no grade is available:
gh issue create --label tech-debt --label severity:<tier> --label handler:<class> --body-file "$body_file"
```

The `handler:<class>` flag is on both forms because it is not optional the way the grade is: a filing that has not read the cited code still knows how far its own suggested fix reaches.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

On the GAIA maintainer repository every filing carries one more label, `surface:<side>` (step 6). It rides in both `--labels` strings above and on both `gh issue create` forms as `--label surface:<side>`, immediately after `severity:<tier>`. Like the handler class it is not optional the way the grade is: a filing that has not read the cited code still knows which side of the adopter/maintainer split its cited path sits on.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

**Never** pass `--body <argv>` here. CI runs this command with `--verbose`, and `--verbose` echoes argv into the public Actions log, so an inline `--body` string leaks the finding (and anything sensitive quoted inside it) into a public log. Always route the body through `--body-file` (or stdin); the body must never reach argv.

Then, as its own tool call, spelling the path literally:

```bash
rm -f .gaia/local/audit/issue-body-<something-unique>.md
```

The body-file is scratch, and this recipe is its only owner: nothing else reaps it, so a file left behind is permanent litter in the adopter's working tree. **Delete it unconditionally**, whether the create succeeded or failed. The body is fully reconstructible from step 5, so there is nothing worth keeping on a failed create, and the cleanup cannot mask that failure: `gh`'s own output and exit status are what you report.

**Two tool calls, not one.** A `PreToolUse` hook returns a single allow/deny decision for an entire Bash invocation before any of it reaches the shell, so a hook that denies the cleanup drops the create standing beside it too: no issue filed, and no output naming the cause. Splitting them keeps a denied cleanup from costing you the filing. One consequence for how the second call is written: shell variables do not survive between tool calls, so spell the path literally rather than reusing `$body_file`. Either spelling of it works, relative or absolute, and the destructive-command guard whitelists this directory both ways.

## Provenance line

Beside the dedup-key line, the issue body (or a waived finding's pull-request-body entry) carries a second HTML comment recording the branch the finding was surfaced from, byte-for-byte in this form:

```
<!-- gaia-debt-key: v1 class=holistic/unclassified path=app/services/foo.ts line=42 -->
<!-- gaia-debt-origin: branch=debt/1121-marker-sep mode=drain unit=1121 changed=1 head=a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2 -->
```

Both are HTML comments, so neither appears in the rendered issue. Fields are `key=value` pairs separated by single spaces, in the order above. The order is canonical for readability only: the pairs are self-describing, so a reader must not depend on position, and adding or removing a field breaks no reader.

There is no version prefix, ever. The dedup key carries one because it is an identity that must match across time. Provenance matches nothing, so a version would imply a versioned contract and invite the lockstep discipline this design exists to avoid.

The field table:

| field | value | survives branch deletion |
|---|---|---|
| `branch` | the raw branch verbatim, or `unknown` | yes |
| `mode` | one of `drain`, `plan`, `maintenance`, `adhoc`, `unknown` | yes |
| `unit` | the issue numbers or plan/spec id encoded in the branch name, or `unknown` | yes |
| `changed` | `0`, `1`, or `unknown` | yes |
| `head` | the reviewed HEAD sha, or `unknown` | no |

**`mode` and `unit` describe the branch, not the filer.** Both are derived from the branch name alone, by the convention table below, so they record the branch the filing resolved against, an explicit branch a caller supplies, the pull request head ref in continuous integration, or otherwise the checkout's own branch, rather than the work the session was doing. Concurrent work in one checkout inherits that branch's stamp: a session filing a finding from a checkout parked on someone else's `debt/*` branch is stamped with that branch's unit. Do not read either field as authorship.

**Reserved characters.** Two are percent-encoded in a value: `>`, because a git branch name may legally contain it and an unencoded one would terminate the HTML comment early and leak the remainder as visible text, and `%` itself, so the encoding is invertible and a reader can recover the exact branch name. `%` is encoded first, then `>`; that order is what makes the round trip exact. "Verbatim" above means the raw name after that reversible encoding, not a normalized or truncated one. This is the same reasoning `gaia_key_slug` applies in `.gaia/scripts/audit-key-lib.sh`, with a far smaller reserved set because this value is read by humans rather than used as a filename.

**Why `head` is carried despite rotting.** While the commit is reachable it makes a cited `path:line` resolvable with `git show <sha>:<path>`, a partial mitigation for the line drift that makes older keys stale. Everything else on the line is a stored conclusion rather than a coordinate, so it stays readable after the branch is gone.

**The convention table.** `branch` is normalized for matching only, the stored `branch` field always keeps the raw name: strip a single leading `worktree-`, then replace every `+` with `/` in what remains, both steps unconditional, in that order. The normalized name is matched against this table, first matching row wins:

| # | normalized branch | `mode` | `unit` |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | `debt/<members>-batch`, `<members>` matching `^[0-9]+(-[0-9]+)*$` | `drain` | `<members>` |
| 2 | `debt/<rest>` | `drain` | the leading `[0-9]+` of `<rest>`, else `unknown` |
| 3 | `spec-<nnn>` or `spec-<nnn>-<rest>`, `<nnn>` matching `^[0-9]+$` | `plan` | `SPEC-<nnn>` |
| 4 | `plan-<nnn>` or `plan-<nnn>-<rest>`, `<nnn>` matching `^[0-9]+$` | `plan` | `plan-<nnn>` |
| 5 | `chore/<rest>` or `chore-<rest>` | `maintenance` | `<rest>` |
| 6 | `harden/<rest>` or `harden-<rest>` | `maintenance` | `<rest>` |
| 7 | `wiki-sync/<rest>` | `maintenance` | `<rest>` |
| 8 | `audit-<rest>` | `maintenance` | `<rest>` |
| 9 | anything else, including `main`, `fix/<rest>`, `docs/<rest>`, `feat/<rest>` | `adhoc` | `unknown` |

Any derived `unit` that comes out empty becomes `unknown`. Row 9 routes `fix/`, `docs/`, and `feat/` to `adhoc` deliberately: those are hand-named human work with no unit encoded in the branch name. The table is keyed on prefix families rather than exact per-command branch names because a table of exact names matches almost no real branch: roughly twenty real `chore/*` and `harden/*` branches would fall through to `adhoc` otherwise. A new branch family that later deserves its own mode is a change to this file, not a new field and not a version bump.

When `branch` resolves to `unknown` (no explicit branch argument, no head-ref environment variable, and no current branch from git), `mode` and `unit` are also `unknown`, never `adhoc`. `adhoc` means a branch resolved and matched no row, a different fact from no branch resolving at all.

**The derivation.** One shared helper, `.gaia/scripts/debt-origin-lib.sh`, owns the encoding, the classification, and the line assembly. Each route calls it once per finding, in the spelling its own surface gives. Bare:

```bash
origin="$(bash .gaia/scripts/debt-origin-lib.sh --changed "<0|1|unknown>" 2>/dev/null || true)"
```

It fails open throughout: each field it cannot resolve becomes the literal `unknown`, it exits zero regardless, and a caller never treats its output as a precondition.

**The fail-open rule, stated as a rule.** Never block, fail, retry, or defer a filing or a waive because provenance is partial, absent, or malformed. If the helper prints nothing, omit the line and continue. Omitting the line is reserved for a route that predates provenance or for a helper that could not run: a working route must never omit the line as a way of expressing that nothing resolved, because a line of unknowns and no line at all must stay distinguishable.

**One route cannot call it.** In continuous integration the audit agent's tool policy grants no shell for this helper, so the audit workflow resolves provenance in a step of its own, ahead of the agent, and writes the finished lines to disk for the agent to read. The agent never re-derives them and carries no prose copy of the rules. One implementation, not two.

**The `changed` field, precisely.** It reports whether the cited path is in the pull request's fork-point changed-file set. Two nearer sets are explicitly wrong: not the filtered review scope (the frontend audit agent's own `changed` variable is pathspec-limited to TypeScript sources, so a finding on a non-TypeScript file the pull request touched would read `0`), and not the incremental audit base (the last cleared ancestor, which on a re-audit covers only the delta since the previous round, while the touched-file waive rule anchors on the whole-PR fork point). A route that does not already hold a fork-point set records `changed=unknown` and derives nothing. When the fork point does not resolve, `changed` is `unknown` and never `0`, because `0` asserts that the work did not touch the file and an unresolvable base asserts nothing.

**The emitting routes:**

| route | instruction surface | `changed` |
|---|---|---|
| audit agent disposition pipeline, local | `.claude/agents/code-audit-frontend.md` | resolved |
| audit agent disposition pipeline, continuous integration | `.github/workflows/code-review-audit.yml` | resolved, by the workflow |
| pre-merge orchestrator cross-remit disposition | `wiki/concepts/PR Merge Workflow.md` | resolved |
| knowledge-audit filing block | `.claude/skills/gaia/references/audit.md` | `unknown` |
| comprehensive-audit filing offer and direct human invocation | this file | `unknown` |

Known limitation: the routes with a reviewed diff run on the branch under review, so their `branch`, `mode`, and `unit` track that work. The routes with no reviewed diff run wherever the session happened to sit, so on those rows the fields are the disposing agent's checkout and nothing more.

**What the record does not answer.** It supports attribution, not causation. It says which branch a finding was surfaced from; it does not say the work on that branch caused the defect, and for a pre-existing defect found during a visit it usually did not. Overreading it is the failure mode to avoid.

**Waived findings.** A finding recorded as waived rather than filed carries the same line, from the same helper, on its pull-request-body entry beside the dedup key already listed there. That entry is the waived finding's only durable surface: the disposition sidecar is gitignored, janitor-reaped, and dropped on the next digest rotation. The line is an HTML comment, so review-time visibility is unchanged. Note what this does not buy: `changed` does not separate the machinery waive from the touched-file waive, because a pull request fixing gate machinery is normally touching the machinery path it waives, so both arms usually read `changed=1`.

**Ownership.** This file is the contract's sole owner. Every other route references it and restates neither the vocabulary nor the table. `.gaia/scripts/debt-origin-lib.sh` is the implementation of the contract rather than a second statement of it.

## 5. Issue body schema

Build a self-contained issue body with these parts, in order:

- The dedup-key comment line from step 1, present verbatim.
- The provenance line (see "Provenance line" above), present verbatim, on its own line immediately after the dedup-key line and never merged into it.
- The `file:line` location. The cited line must resolve to a real line in the named file, don't cite a location you haven't confirmed.
- A concrete, non-empty description of the failure mode: what input or state triggers it, and what the bad outcome is. "Could be cleaner" is not a failure mode; "a null `userId` reaches this branch and throws" is.
- A suggested fix.

The body carries no classification fields of its own. Every classification axis steps 6 and 7 define rides as a label, so a body line restating one of them is a second representation of a value the labels already hold, and the two drift.

## 6. Labels

Every out-of-scope non-security issue this recipe files carries `tech-debt` plus **exactly one** severity label, plus **exactly one** handler label; a filing that carries a difficulty grade (see step 7) carries exactly one difficulty label as well. Map the finding's report tier to the severity label like this:

| Report tier | Label |
|---|---|
| Critical | `severity:critical` |
| Important | `severity:important` |
| Suggestion | `severity:suggestion` |
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

**Maintainer repository only.** Every filing on the GAIA maintainer repository carries **exactly one** `surface:` label as well. It records **who can observe the defect**, which is a different question from how bad it is and from how hard it is to fix:

| Label | The defect is |
|---|---|
| `surface:adopter` | observable by an adopter: something GAIA ships misbehaves, misleads, or blocks them. |
| `surface:maintainer` | observable only in the GAIA maintainer repository: continuous integration, release-excluded tests, maintainer-only tooling. |

Resolve it from the cited path first: a release-excluded path is `surface:maintainer`, a shipped path is `surface:adopter`. Then override that default when the failure mode contradicts it, because the two do come apart. A defect in a shipped file that is only reachable through a maintainer-only runner is `surface:maintainer` even though the file ships, and a maintainer-only script whose wrong output is copied into an adopter-facing artifact is `surface:adopter` even though the script does not. The path is the prior, the failure mode is the verdict.

Unlike severity, this label has no fallback: an unlabeled issue is not sorted into a default band, it is simply unfiled against the split. Exactly one is required on every filing.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

The handler label records **how far the fix reaches**, which decides how the eventual drain approaches it:

| Label | The fix is |
|---|---|
| `handler:prompt` | a single logical unit confined to one file, with no public-contract change and no cross-module ripple. |
| `handler:plan` | anything larger or more structural. |
| `handler:spec` | design-first: it must begin with a design SPEC, a new subsystem, a schema or contract decision, or a cross-cutting redesign. `/gaia-debt` resolves a spec-class issue by printing a `/gaia-spec` handoff and stopping, not by opening a fix PR. |

The three share one color family, a violet ramp that deepens with reach. `wiki/concepts/GitHub Labels.md` documents the family, and `gaia labels sync` applies it.

The class is advisory: whatever later drains the issue re-derives it from the cited code and may override it, in either direction, including the `spec` value. That is precisely why it rides as a label rather than as body prose. Re-grading is `gh issue edit <n> --remove-label handler:spec --add-label handler:plan`, which leaves the transition in the issue's timeline, where a body edit would have destroyed the prior value and a correcting comment would have left the body still asserting the overruled one.

Being advisory also sets how strictly it is checked. `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` validates at most one handler label and rejects a value outside the three above, but absence is not a finding: a human-filed issue that carries no class is legal, and the drain treats it as unclassified and grades it from code like any other.

The `fold:` label records that **the repair's cost is dominated by a fixed cost the finding alone does not justify**, so draining it on its own pays that cost for a change too small to warrant it.

| Label | Apply it when |
|---|---|
| `fold:required` | the repair should ride a change that already pays its fixed cost, and nothing about the finding on its own justifies paying that cost. |

That one condition is the whole application rule. The instance it was written for is a small prose edit to a path the audit gate treats as global (`AUDIT_GLOBAL_RULES_PATHS` in `.claude/hooks/lib/audit-rules-changed.sh`), which discards every Code Audit Team member's incremental review anchor repo-wide: the repair is one sentence and the reset is not. The general form is any repair whose cost sits in the change around it rather than in the change itself.

**Display-only, gating nothing.** `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` reads it in three places, `list`'s annotation, `why`'s report, and the description of that issue's option in the recommendation prompt, so the intent reaches the human making the pick. It never filters the candidate pool, never changes the ordering, and never changes the clustering pass. Which carrier a folded repair should ride is a property of the *other* change's fix, so no pure function over this issue's fields can compute it, and the ordering and clustering are deliberately model-free. An annotation on the option is enough leverage, because with two or more candidates the drain always stops for a human-approved pick anyway.

Optional, and absence is the ordinary case: most repairs carry their own cost. Exactly one is permitted when present, and `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` validates the value the way it validates a difficulty grade.

See step 7 for the difficulty label's three permitted values and the rubric for choosing between them.

A finding that gets deliberately declined (closed without fixing) carries GitHub's `wontfix` label, that's what step 2 checks for to avoid re-filing it.

The registry is reconciled before the first filing in a run, then anything still missing is created directly. This is the idiom `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` already uses: key the fallback on the labels the repository actually has, never on whether the sync announced a problem. A sync that cannot run at all announces nothing, so a guard reading its output treats the worst case as the healthy one.

```bash
.gaia/cli/gaia labels sync 2>/dev/null || true
present="$(gh label list --limit 200 --json name --jq '.[].name' 2>/dev/null)"
for label in tech-debt severity:critical severity:important severity:suggestion \
             handler:prompt handler:plan handler:spec \
             fold:required \
             difficulty:easy difficulty:medium difficulty:hard wontfix; do
  printf '%s\n' "$present" | grep -qx "$label" || gh label create "$label" 2>/dev/null || true
done
```

The fallback reaches every case the sync leaves a label uncreated: a CLI predating the `labels` command, a token without label-write scope, and a registry entry this repository's audience or feature set does not reach. It is advisory, not a guarantee: a token that cannot write labels cannot create one here either, so the filing continues without it rather than failing. A label that already exists is not an error.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

On the GAIA maintainer repository, the registry's maintainer set is reconciled as well:

```bash
.gaia/cli/gaia labels sync --audience maintainer 2>/dev/null || true
present="$(gh label list --limit 200 --json name --jq '.[].name' 2>/dev/null)"
for label in surface:adopter surface:maintainer; do
  printf '%s\n' "$present" | grep -qx "$label" || gh label create "$label" 2>/dev/null || true
done
```
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

## 7. Difficulty grade

A filing grades, carrying exactly one `difficulty:` label, when the cited code is read at filing time (a reviewer or an audit agent surfaces the defect and you open the code to file it, as with a review follow-up), so the grade is the rubric below applied to real code rather than guessed from a description. Every filed issue already carries a concrete `file:line` and failure mode (step 5 makes both mandatory), so the discriminator is not those but whether the code behind them was read here. A filing that has not read the cited code omits the label rather than guess one. Two routes always read the code and so always grade: `.claude/agents/code-audit-frontend.md`'s non-security disposition pipeline and the tech-debt filing block in `.claude/skills/gaia/references/audit.md`. This section is the single source of truth for the permitted values and for choosing between them; a grading filing never grades against a private reading of a grade's name.

Grade the difficulty of **the fix**, never the model, agent, or tooling that would perform it.

| Grade | The fix carries |
|---|---|
| `difficulty:easy` | no design decision left to make: the issue text and the cited code together determine the change, and two competent engineers would write the same fix. |
| `difficulty:medium` | a design decision the surrounding code settles: more than one implementation is reasonable in the abstract, and reading the adjacent code, its conventions, and its call sites picks one. |
| `difficulty:hard` | a design decision the surrounding code does not settle: two competent engineers who have both read all the cited code could still reasonably choose differently, or the fix must first settle what the correct behavior is. |

Read the three rows top to bottom and take the first whose properties all hold. The rows are exclusive by construction: they ask how many design decisions the fix carries and whether the code answers them, and exactly one answer holds for any one fix.

Difficulty adds the dimension the handler class does not capture. `handler:` grades how far the change reaches; difficulty grades how much design the fix needs. The two often move together, and they are not meant to: a one-file fix whose correct behavior is genuinely in question is `handler:prompt` and `difficulty:hard`, and a mechanical rename across twenty files is `handler:plan` and `difficulty:easy`.

Worked boundary, easy versus medium. A swallowed error the issue text says to rethrow is `difficulty:easy`: the issue determines the change. The same swallowed error, where the issue says only that it must not be swallowed and leaves the choice between rethrowing, logging and continuing, and surfacing to the caller, is `difficulty:medium`: the choice is real, and the sibling call sites settle it.

- **When a filing omits the grade.** A filing omits the label whenever the cited code was not read at filing time, rather than guessing a grade from a description: a direct human invocation that files from a relayed summary or hand-off without reopening the cited code has no rubric-applied grade to give; the orchestrator's cross-remit disposition has not read the finding against this rubric; and the `/health-audit` comprehensive runbook's human-gated filing offer files from an operator's yes on a written report rather than from freshly-read code. A human invocation that *does* read the cited code as it files grades instead (above); it is not forced ungraded merely for arriving by the human path. An issue carrying no grade is normal: it orders, clusters, and drains exactly as a graded one does. That guarantee is what keeps a mixed adopter state safe, since every file this feature touches resolves independently on update: a new copy of this recipe running against an old `debt.md` files grades that nothing yet reads, and a new `debt.md` running against old agents reads a backlog where nothing is graded. Both states are reachable and both benign.
- **Argv constraint.** The value written to the `difficulty:<grade>` label must be one of the three literals above, byte-for-byte, before it reaches any `gh` argv. Argv exposure is minimal here, the token is fixed-vocabulary, which is why the `--body-file` mandate in step 4 is not implicated, but a model-produced string interpolated into a command CI runs with `--verbose` argv echoing earns the one-clause constraint anyway.
- **Disclosure.** The three grade values are fixed and carry no information about the finding: they do not discriminate a security-class finding from any other, so a difficulty grade leaks nothing about security-sensitivity no matter who applies it or where the issue lands. Machine filing never reaches a public repo for a security-class finding, the agent's security-class divert path intercepts it first.
- **Where the grade comes from.** This file defines the rubric; it does not apply it. The two external grading routes named at the top of this section, the frontend audit agent and `audit.md`, read it and write the label; an edit to the value set or the rubric must reach both. The human-invocation grading applies this section's rubric in place, so it needs no separate propagation.

## 8. Touch the debt-count staleness sentinel

As the last step of this recipe, touch the sentinel so the statusline's debt count recomputes on its next tick:

```bash
debt_root="$(bash .gaia/scripts/main-root-lib.sh)" || debt_root="."
mkdir -p "$debt_root/.gaia/local/debt" && : > "$debt_root/.gaia/local/debt/refresh-requested"
```

Create the parent directory first. On a fresh clone, or in CI, no statusline tick has run yet, so `.gaia/local/debt/` may not exist, a bare `touch` against a missing directory fails silently and leaves the sentinel unset. The write is anchored on the main checkout because the sentinel is shared state, one copy for the clone: `debt/count.json|debt/refresh-requested` is registry scope `shared`, so every tree reads the same physical copy through the resolver. This step is best-effort: never let a failure here block or fail the caller's flow, which is why the fallback is `.` rather than an exit.

<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

The rollout section below is GAIA's own migration record and is stripped from
the shipped skill. Do not unwrap it; if a future rollout genuinely applies to
every clone, write that one as its own section outside these markers.

## Rollout: backfill the handler class onto the existing backlog

The handler class rides as a `handler:` label (step 6). A backlog filed before that carries the class as a `Handler:` body line instead, which nothing reads any more, so those issues drain as unclassified until the label lands. This is a real backfill and it is safe to be one: every stored value came from a filing route applying step 6's rubric, so copying it onto a label preserves a real conclusion rather than inventing one.

1. Reconcile the registry idempotently, which covers the whole set; the three `handler:` labels, in the violet family the registry documents, are what this rollout needs from it. Re-running this is free.
2. For every open `tech-debt` issue that carries **no** `handler:` label and whose body carries a parseable `Handler:` line, add the matching label.
3. Re-running is safe. The label test is what makes it so: an issue that already carries a class is skipped, so a drainer's re-grade between runs is never overwritten by the body's original value.

```bash
.gaia/cli/gaia labels sync 2>/dev/null || true
present="$(gh label list --limit 200 --json name --jq '.[].name' 2>/dev/null)"
for label in handler:prompt handler:plan handler:spec; do
  printf '%s\n' "$present" | grep -qx "$label" || gh label create "$label" 2>/dev/null || true
done
gh issue list --label tech-debt --state open --limit 1000 --json number,labels,body \
  --jq '.[]
        | select(([.labels[].name] | map(select(startswith("handler:"))) | length) == 0)
        | "\(.number) handler:\(((.body // "") | capture("(?m)^Handler:[ ]+(?<h>prompt|plan|spec)")).h)"' \
| while read -r n label; do
    gh issue edit "$n" --add-label "$label"
  done
```

An issue with no parseable `Handler:` line emits nothing at all, because `capture` yields no result on a non-match and drops the whole record: an unparseable line and an absent one both leave the issue unclassified, which is the legal state step 6 already allows. Nothing guesses a class from the title or the failure mode.

The sweep adds a label and never edits a body. A legacy `Handler:` line is inert once the label exists, and rewriting two dozen bodies to remove it would spend a lossy edit per issue to delete text no reader consults. New filings carry no such line (step 5), so the residue does not grow.

This is GAIA's own migration and nobody else's. The `Handler:` body-line convention only ever existed in this repository, so the sweep's `capture` can match nothing in any other clone; the section stays because the backfill may still be re-run against this backlog.

<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

## Brake self-check

```bash
gh issue list --label tech-debt --state open --limit 1000 --json number,body \
  --jq '[.[]
         | select((.body // "") | test("<!-- gaia-debt-origin:"))
         | select((.body // "") | test("(^|[[:space:]])mode=drain([[:space:]]|$)"))
         | select((.body // "") | test("(^|[[:space:]])changed=1([[:space:]]|$)"))]
        | map(.number)'
```

Each field is matched independently rather than as one ordered pattern, because the line's field order is canonical for readability only and no reader may depend on it. The `.body // ""` guard matters: an issue with an empty body would otherwise abort the whole query.

This query is a triage aid, not a gate. Legitimate members of the result set exist, a security-class finding that is never waive-eligible among them, so a non-empty result is a prompt to look rather than proof of a bug. It promises no rate: no baseline exists, and producing one is what this query is for.

## Contract-preserve note

The wrapped `gaia-debt-key` format (step 1) and the label spellings (step 6) are not just prose here, they are a contract shared with several consumers and their tests. Step 2's dedup **matching basis** is `path=`+`line=` (ignoring `class=`), but that only changes which issue this recipe treats as a match, it does not change the wrapped key format (step 1) or any label spelling (step 6), so none of the consumers below need a change on account of it. Change the key format or any label spelling **only in lockstep** with all of these:

- `.claude/hooks/audit-disposition-check.sh`
- `.gaia/statusline/gaia-statusline.sh`
- `.gaia/scripts/debt-count-refresh.sh`
- `.claude/hooks/debt-session-reconcile.sh`
- `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md`
- `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh`
- `.claude/rules/issue-claim.md`
- `.claude/hooks/issue-claim-release.sh`
- `.gaia/labels.json`
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->
- Tests: `.gaia/tests/hooks/debt-sentinel-touch.bats`, `.gaia/tests/hooks/debt-session-reconcile.bats`, `.gaia/scripts/tests/debt-count-refresh.bats`, `.gaia/tests/statusline/audit-nudge-drift-suppression.bats`, `.gaia/scripts/tests/check-debt-issue-metadata.bats`, `.gaia/tests/hooks/issue-claim-release.bats`
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

`.gaia/labels.json` is the last entry rather than a consumer at all: it is where every spelling this section governs is defined, so a rename is a registry edit by construction. Rename there by changing the entry's `name` and appending the old spelling to its `renamedFrom`, then regenerate the wiki page with `.gaia/cli/gaia labels docs`. `labels sync` takes its label definitions from that file and nowhere else, so a rename that works every consumer in that list and skips the registry leaves sync creating the old label forever and the new one never.

`check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` is the only consumer that gates on a label spelling rather than merely tolerating one. It hardcodes the permitted value set for every namespace steps 6 and 7 define, and the key's line shape, so it is the consumer a spelling change breaks first and loudest, which is the intended direction: a rename that forgets this file fails a filing immediately instead of degrading a count silently.

The governed set also includes the `in-progress` claim label, which has more consumers than any other spelling here because it is not tech-debt-specific. `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` creates and applies it as the `/gaia-debt` claim and `.claude/rules/issue-claim.md` applies it to every other issue type; `.claude/hooks/issue-claim-release.sh` removes it on a confirmed merge; `.gaia/scripts/debt-count-refresh.sh` consumes it, excluding any issue that carries it from the open count; and `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` hardcodes the bare spelling in its pre-file guard, outside the namespace vocabulary sets, so for this one spelling a forgotten rename fails **open**: the guard matches a label nothing applies any more, and a filing carrying the renamed claim stops being rejected. The release hook's own removal is best-effort and silent, so a rename that forgets it degrades quietly rather than failing: every claim it was meant to release stays set. The same holds for the two park labels, `debt:spec-pending` and `debt:spec-active`: `debt.md` creates and applies `debt:spec-pending` as the `/gaia-debt` design-first handoff park label and directs the pasted spec session to swap it for `debt:spec-active` once the pipeline starts, `.gaia/scripts/debt-count-refresh.sh` consumes both, excluding any issue that carries either from the open count too, and that same pre-file guard names both in the same regex, so each carries the same fail-open direction on a forgotten rename. Rename them together: they are one axis with two values, and a rename that reaches only the spelling it was looking for leaves the other consumer set half-migrated. This recipe creates or applies none of these labels itself.

Four of the consumers above are untouched by every **namespace** rename in the namespace paragraphs below, so they are named once here rather than per paragraph, as the **count/statusline/hook four**: `.gaia/scripts/debt-count-refresh.sh` excludes exactly three label names (`in-progress`, `debt:spec-pending`, and `debt:spec-active`) and ignores the rest, `.claude/hooks/audit-disposition-check.sh` matches the dedup key in the body and parses no labels, `.gaia/statusline/gaia-statusline.sh` parses no labels, and `.claude/hooks/debt-session-reconcile.sh` only reconciles the count downward.

The scope is those paragraphs and not this whole section: the `in-progress`, `debt:spec-pending`, and `debt:spec-active` labels above are in the governed set too, and `.gaia/scripts/debt-count-refresh.sh` and `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` hardcode all three spellings, but only the two `debt:` park labels still carry a namespace to rename, so a namespace rename reaches just those two labels. `.claude/rules/issue-claim.md` and `.claude/hooks/issue-claim-release.sh` are untouched by a namespace rename for that same reason, since `in-progress` is the only spelling either one carries. They are deliberately not counted into the count/statusline/hook four, which is a group defined by parsing a namespace and finding nothing to change, not by being unaffected.

Each paragraph below names only what varies from that: which consumers read its namespace, and what `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` does with it. A per-paragraph restatement is what lets copies of one inventory drift apart, leaving each reader whichever version sits nearest their namespace.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

The `surface:` namespace (step 6) is a label spelling and within this contract's scope. Verified against every consumer named above: one of them reads it and the rest do not. `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` is where the requirement is enforced rather than merely stated. The count/statusline/hook four are untouched, and `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` neither sorts, clusters, nor gates on it. A second reader sits outside that list, because it is a filing route rather than a consumer of filed issues: `.claude/skills/gaia/references/audit.md` maps the knowledge audit's `surface` block field onto the label before creating the issue.

This namespace carries a **second** edit set the others do not, and a rename that stops at the two readers above breaks it silently. The axis is maintainer-only, so the spelling is also a scrub token: `.gaia/release-scrub.yml`'s `surface-label-vocabulary` leak check matches on it, and a rename leaves that check green while guarding a spelling nothing writes any more, which is the adopter leak it exists to catch. Renaming the namespace therefore means editing step 6, the registry entries, those two consumers, the leak check's pattern, and every site the pattern is meant to reach: the marker-wrapped spans in this file, `.claude/agents/code-audit-frontend.md`, `.claude/skills/gaia/references/audit.md`, and `wiki/concepts/Audit Disposition and Debt Fix.md`, plus the fixtures pinning it in `.gaia/cli/src/release/scrub.test.ts`, `.gaia/tests/lib/doc-difficulty-prose.bats`, and `.gaia/scripts/tests/check-debt-issue-metadata.bats`. `CHANGELOG.md` carries the spelling too and is deliberately not in that set, because it records what shipped and a rename never rewrites it. Re-run the pattern as a `git grep` rather than trusting this list to have stayed complete.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

The `handler:` namespace (step 6) is a label spelling and within this contract's scope. Re-verified against every consumer named above: two of them read it and the rest do not. `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` hardcodes the three permitted values, so a rename that forgets it fails a filing immediately. `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` resolves the class out of the `labels` projection its ordering query already builds and reads it in three places (the offer-time spec read, the Fix-time spec screen, and `list`/`why`'s annotations), so a rename must reach the one `startswith("handler:")` selector there. The count/statusline/hook four are untouched.

The `fold:` namespace (step 6) is a label spelling and within this contract's scope. Verified against every consumer named above: two of them read it and the rest do not. `.gaia/scripts/check-debt-issue-metadata.sh` hardcodes the one permitted value, so a rename that forgets it fails a filing immediately. `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` resolves it out of the `labels` projection its ordering query already builds and surfaces it in three display sites (`list`'s annotation, `why`'s report, and the recommendation prompt's option description), so a rename must reach the one `startswith("fold:")` selector there. No consumer gates on it, which is the point of the label rather than an accident of its youth: the count/statusline/hook four are untouched.

The `difficulty:` namespace (step 7) is a label spelling, so it is within this lockstep contract's scope. No consumer **outside `check-debt-issue-metadata.sh`** gates on it, verified against every consumer named above: the count/statusline/hook four are untouched, and `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` surfaces it in output only, never to gate a path (`debt.md`'s own Guardrails: "Difficulty grading never gates anything"). Renaming the namespace therefore requires zero gating changes to any of them, and two literal edits in `check-debt-issue-metadata.sh`: the `'difficulty:'` prefix it passes to its count check and to its vocabulary check. The registry's own three entries are a third edit, as they are for every namespace here, and regenerating the wiki page follows from them. `DIFFICULTY_VALUES` is not one of them, since it holds the grades and a prefix rename does not touch them. Nor does forgetting the prefix fail a filing the way it would for a mandatory namespace: this one is optional, so the count check passes on zero and the vocabulary check returns before reading anything, which leaves the renamed label validated by nothing.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:start -->

Nothing catches that omission, which is why it is called out. No test couples the script's prefix to this file's spelling: `.gaia/tests/lib/doc-difficulty-prose.bats` reds when this file's `difficulty:` literals change but never reads the script, and the check's own suite, `.gaia/scripts/tests/check-debt-issue-metadata.bats`, reds only once one of the two prefixes has already been edited, so it catches a half-done rename rather than a skipped one. The script edit is unguarded and has to be made by hand.
<!-- gaia:maintainer-only:end -->

Provenance (the `gaia-debt-origin` line, see "Provenance line" above) is a separate line and joins none of that lockstep set. Adding, removing, or renaming a provenance field requires no change to any deterministic consumer of the dedup key. No consumer reads the issue body positionally, so a second HTML comment beside the dedup key is safe: `.claude/hooks/lib/audit-dispositions.sh` reconstructs the wrapped dedup key and tests it as a substring, and `.claude/skills/gaia/references/debt.md` captures on the literal `<!-- gaia-debt-key: ` prefix; neither reads past it. The keyless `<path>:<line>` fallback cannot false-match a provenance field either, since no provenance field yields a colon followed by digits. The helper deliberately inverts `audit-key-lib.sh`'s fail-closed rule, printing `unknown` in a slot it cannot resolve rather than refusing to print a partial line; that inversion is deliberate, not a bug to "fix" into agreement.

If you're only filing an issue, none of the above needs touching, this note exists so a future edit to the key/label shapes doesn't silently break them.