Debt ops add

Skill bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt/copilot/skills/debt-ops-add

Register a deferred decision in the tech-debt registry. Trigger by judgment, not a marker scan, whenever a future reader would ask "why this way?": an unmade decision, stub, loosened type, bypassed check, swallowed error, a default picked "for now", or a TODO/FIXME/HACK/XXX marker. Trigger immediately whenever you defer work, or when the user asks to log/register tech debt. Over-register freely; the developer drops with "drop A", "drop A,C", or "drop all".From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt --skill debt-ops-add

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

3 things to look at

skips confirmationTells the agent to proceed without asking first, 2 times: "Don't ask the developer for confirmation before writing." and 1 more.
8 stars8 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
runs commandsInstructs the agent to run 3 commands, including `python3 scripts/register.py` and 2 more.

SKILL.md

3.6 KB, 844 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

debt-ops-add — register a tech-debt entry

Call the bundled register.py via your shell tool. It lives in this skill's scripts/ directory — reference it with the relative path below (your agent resolves it against the skill root). The helper writes the entry under the repo's detected registry dir (default docs/debt/), assigns a short batch letter (A, B, C…), and prints exactly one line: +1 entry: <slug> (<letter>). That stdout IS the user-facing announcement — add no commentary before or after.

The call

python3 scripts/register.py \
  --slug <slug> \
  --principal <effort, e.g. 2d, 1w, unknown> \
  --interest <ongoing cost, e.g. "+30min/incident", unknown> \
  --hotspot <path or module, e.g. pricing/engine.ts, unknown> \
  --business-capability <e.g. checkout, billing, unknown> \
  --payoff-trigger <concrete trigger, or "unknown"> \
  --quadrant <reckless-inadvertent|reckless-deliberate|prudent-inadvertent|prudent-deliberate> \
  --category <migration|documentation|testing|code_quality|dead_code|code_rot|expertise|release|infrastructure|planning> \
  --ai-authored <true|false> <<'EOF'
<body: 2-5 sentences — what the debt is, why it exists, observed symptoms>
EOF

The helper:

Generates the timestamp id itself (no date call needed).
Resolves filename collisions when two registrations land in the same second.
Tracks the letter mapping in ~/.cache/debt-ops/cache/<repo-hash>/current-turn.txt (override the base with DEBT_OPS_CACHE) so the user can drop by letter.

Slug

1–4 word kebab-case label of what the debt is. Examples: cancelled-promotion-callback, legacy-auth-shim, unfinished-rate-limiter. Keep it short — the body carries the context.

Schema notes

Quadrant (Fowler): reckless-inadvertent (didn't know better), reckless-deliberate (knew, did it anyway), prudent-inadvertent (learned afterward), prudent-deliberate (deliberate, with a payoff plan).
Category (Google / Jaspan-Green): pick the closest match.
payoff_trigger: unknown is first-class. Don't manufacture a trigger to fill the field — unknown ages into stale review and that's the point.
ai_authored: true is the leading behavioral signal — be honest.

Drops

drop A, drop A,C, drop all — on tools with a debt-ops hook adapter this is handled automatically. Without an adapter (skills-only tool), delete the matching entry yourself: read ~/.cache/debt-ops/cache/<repo-hash>/current-turn.txt for the letter → filename mapping, then rm <registry-dir>/<filename>.
drop it or drop <slug> — delete it yourself: rm <registry-dir>/<id>-<slug>.md (default registry dir docs/debt/). Treat dropping as cheap — over-registering is the intended posture.

Don't

Don't ask the developer for confirmation before writing. The discipline is "no permission prompt; just do it."
Don't write the file directly with an editor tool — letter assignment depends on going through register.py.
Don't echo or paraphrase the helper's output. The shell tool result is already visible to the user.
Don't fill payoff_trigger with a guess to seem certain.

What ships with it: 1 file

6.2 KB alongside SKILL.md, 1 of them executable

scripts/

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most ship operate skills give in 844 tokens

Counted across 1,077 of the 1,713 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-09-06

Create GitHub releasein 44 of 1077, across 43 files
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Update CHANGELOG.mdin 21 of 1077, across 20 files
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Update the CHANGELOG for new releasesin 19 of 1077

Said here and by no other author read

call the bundled register script
use unknown for missing triggers
delete matching entries for drops

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.