skill · from the engineering plugin

/tech-debt

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.

engineering plugin
Slash command

try it

you ›install the engineering plugin

metaphor ›Installed engineering. /tech-debt is ready.

you ›/tech-debt

metaphor ›Loaded the tech-debt skill. What should I work on?

What the agent is told

This is the skill's SKILL.md, exactly what Metaphor reads before the task.

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Dependency debt	Outdated libraries, unmaintained dependencies	Security vulns
Documentation debt	Missing runbooks, outdated READMEs, tribal knowledge	Onboarding pain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.

Questions

What is the tech-debt skill?

How do I use tech-debt in Metaphor?

Install the engineering plugin by asking the agent "install the engineering plugin", then type /tech-debt in the composer.

What is a skill?

A skill is a set of written instructions the agent reads before it starts a kind of task. It changes how the agent works, not what it is allowed to do.