init

A setup tool that adds or refreshes a shared tech-debt operations section in CLAUDE.md, a project instruction file read by the coding assistant. It keeps the managed section up to date without changing the rest of the file.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to initialize or refresh debt-ops instructions in a project and connect them to the repository's recorded quality commands and debt locations.
Why use it?
It gives the team one written place for debt-management rules and cached quality commands. This reduces differences in how people and assistants handle technical debt.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt/init
Any agent
npx skills add bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt --skill init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 74 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,341 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00074 $0.01341
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00671
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00268
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00134

Measured 2d ago against content hash 31815dd0b012, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

init scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

claude-code/skills/init/SKILL.md · 93 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 93 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/debt-ops:init

Write or update a ## Tech debt operations section in ./CLAUDE.md. Idempotent — only the managed section changes.

1. Read the cached commands

TOPLEVEL=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
REPO_HASH=$(printf '%s' "$TOPLEVEL" | shasum | cut -c1-12)

# Locate this repo's plugin cache. CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA is set in hook
# subprocesses but NOT in the skill's bash env, so glob the standard
# Claude Code plugin-data dirs and fall back to the legacy cache path.
CACHE_DIR=""
for D in \
    ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA:+"$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA/cache/$REPO_HASH"} \
    "$HOME/.claude/plugins/data"/debt-ops*/cache/"$REPO_HASH" \
    "$HOME/.cache/debt-ops/cache/$REPO_HASH"; do
  [ -d "$D" ] && { CACHE_DIR="$D"; break; }
done

LIST="$CACHE_DIR/feedback.list"
[ -n "$CACHE_DIR" ] && [ -f "$LIST" ] && cat "$LIST"

# Detected ADR/registry dirs (ADR 0006/0009). Fall back to the co-located
# defaults if the cache files aren't written yet.
ADR_DIR=$( [ -s "$CACHE_DIR/adr-dir" ] && cat "$CACHE_DIR/adr-dir" || echo "docs/adr" )
REGISTRY_DIR=$( [ -s "$CACHE_DIR/registry-dir" ] && cat "$CACHE_DIR/registry-dir" || echo "docs/debt" )
echo "adr-dir: $ADR_DIR"
echo "registry-dir: $REGISTRY_DIR"

If the file doesn't exist, the SessionStart discovery prompt hasn't run yet. Tell the developer:

No cached quality commands yet. Start a new session so I can detect them, then re-run /debt-ops:init.

…and stop.

2. Compose the section (template)

Substitute {{COMMANDS}} with the cache contents verbatim, {{ADR_DIR}} with the detected adr-dir, and {{REGISTRY_DIR}} with the detected registry-dir (from step 1).

## Tech debt operations

<!-- this section is auto-managed by the debt-ops Claude Code plugin; safe to edit, run /debt-ops:init to regenerate -->

### Disciplines

1. The test for debt: would a future reader ask "why this way?" If yes, register via `/debt-ops:add` immediately — no prompt. This is judgment, not a marker scan: a `TODO`/`FIXME`/`HACK`/`XXX` is the obvious case, but an unmade decision, a stub, a loosened type, or a default picked "for now" all count even with no marker in the diff. Use `payoff_trigger: unknown` if unsure. Announce: `+1 entry: <slug> (drop?)`. Over-register freely; the developer drops with "drop it".

2. When making an architecturally significant change — a data model, public interface, security boundary, release pipeline, or a dep-manifest change that is a major-version bump or a *new* top-level dependency — draft an ADR under `{{ADR_DIR}}/` in Nygard format: a `# NNNN — Title` heading, `**Date:**` and `**Status:**` lines, then Context, Decision, Consequences, Alternatives, Payoff trigger. Create the directory if needed. Only draft an ADR when there are two credible alternatives; if you cannot list two, it is a comment, not an ADR. An ADR with a payoff trigger *is* deliberate debt — when you write one, also call `/debt-ops:add` so the registry entry mirrors the ADR (don't conclude "no markers, no debt").

3. Read entries under `{{REGISTRY_DIR}}/` before changing files they reference.

### Quality commands

These run after every edit under a 3 s budget per command. Edit freely; the plugin reads tolerantly. Lines starting with `#` are estimates/comments and are skipped at run time.

<!-- debt-ops:feedback v1 -->
{{COMMANDS}}
<!-- /debt-ops:feedback -->

Read the full file on GitHub · 93 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 93 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 31815dd0b012

Subscribe to this mod's changes

init is a skill published in the GitHub repository bcanfield/agentic-tech-debt (8 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 1,341 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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