Technical Debt Register

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name: technical-debt-register
description: "Document and prioritize a technical debt backlog with business impact, effort estimates, and resolution strategy. Use when asked to audit technical debt, create a debt register, prioritize tech debt for a quarter, document architectural shortcuts, or build a debt reduction roadmap. Produces a structured technical debt register covering debt inventory by category, business impact per item, effort and priority scores, top-item resolution plans, and a quarterly debt reduction roadmap."
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# Technical Debt Register Skill

Produce a complete technical debt register for a team or service. A debt register is not a complaint list — it is a prioritized, business-impact-aware inventory that lets an engineering team make deliberate choices about which debt to pay down, in what order, and with what expected return.

Good debt management is not eliminating all debt. It is ensuring debt is visible, owned, and resolved when the interest cost exceeds the cost of fixing it.

## Required Inputs

Ask for these if not already provided:
- **Team or service name** — what team and/or service this register covers
- **Known debt items** — list of known technical debt, or ask Claude to elicit them by asking about: legacy code, missing tests, outdated dependencies, architectural shortcuts, manual processes, observability gaps, security backlogs
- **Tech stack** — language, frameworks, infrastructure (helps Claude categorise and score items correctly)
- **Team size and velocity** — number of engineers and approximate story points or days per sprint (needed for effort estimates)
- **Current quarter / planning period** — so the roadmap targets the right timeframe

## Output Format

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# Technical Debt Register: [Team / Service Name]… load the full skill through Skill Me