Skip to content
Back to skills

Brooks Debt

ASecurity

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...

  • 1,504 stars
  • 0 votes
  • 0 copies
  • 3 views
  • Added May 26, 2026
developmentkubernetesrefactoringdatabase

Security analysis

A100/100

Pro scans all 2 files and shows the line behind each finding

Scanned September 21, 2026

npx -y skills add hyhmrright/brooks-lint --skill brooks-debt --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Are you the author of Brooks Debt?

Add the live security badge to your README. It updates with every re-scan.

Security grade badge for Brooks Debt
[![Security: A — Skills Directory](https://www.skillsdirectory.com/api/skills/hyhmrright-brooks-debt/badge)](https://www.skillsdirectory.com/skills/hyhmrright-brooks-debt)

More formats (shields.io, HTML) on the badges page. Keep it an A: scan every change in CI with Pro.

Download with Pro
SKILL.md
---
name: brooks-debt
description: >
  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.
metadata:
  opencode/slash: "true"
---

# Brooks-Lint — Tech Debt Assessment

## Setup

Read in order:

1. `../_shared/common.md` — Iron Law, Project Config, Report Template, Health Score
2. `../_shared/source-coverage.md` — book coverage, exceptions, tradeoffs
3. `../_shared/decay-risks.md` — symptom definitions and source attributions
4. `debt-guide.md` (this directory) — the debt classification framework

## Process

**Scope:** if the user did not describe the codebase or point to specific areas, apply
Auto Scope Detection (`../_shared/common.md`) first.

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

**Mode line in report:** `Tech Debt Assessment`

Files in this skill

  • SKILL.md1.7 KB
  • debt-guide.md5.2 KB

Attribution

Is this your skill, or is something wrong with this listing? Request removal or report an issue. Author removals are honored within 72 hours.

Comments

Loading comments…

Newsletter

Get the weekly list of safe new skills, and the ones we pulled.