zero-tech-debt

A code-cleanup workflow for rewriting a patch into its intended final design. It removes unused compatibility code, fallback paths, flags, wrappers, and other leftovers from earlier changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a patch has accumulated legacy paths or compatibility layers and you want to simplify it after checking which callers still rely on them.
Why use it?
It prevents temporary migration code and unneeded branches from becoming permanent maintenance work.

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/darkroomengineering/cc-settings/zero-tech-debt
Any agent
npx skills add darkroomengineering/cc-settings --skill zero-tech-debt
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/darkroomengineering/cc-settings

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 61 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 550 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 $0.00061 $0.00550
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00275
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00110
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00055

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4a766be48fd5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

zero-tech-debt 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.

skills/zero-tech-debt/SKILL.md · 35 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 35 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Zero Tech Debt

Rework the change from the intended end-state, not from the historical path that produced the current patch. The principles (no compat hacks, no abstractions you don't need, no dead branches) are in AGENTS.md — this skill is the workflow for applying them to a specific patch.

When to invoke

  • A feature has accreted mode props, route aliases, or fallbacks across iterations
  • A migration left behind a compatibility shim that no current caller uses
  • You catch yourself preserving an old shape "just in case" with no concrete caller in mind
  • The diff is bigger than the change it represents because it's making the old structure better instead of removing it

For restructuring code outside the current diff use /refactor. This skill is for the patch in front of you. (Claude Code 2.1.147 renamed /simplify to /code-review and removed the old cleanup-and-fix behavior; the native command is now a correctness reporter, not a code tightener.)

Steps

  1. State the intended end-state. One or two sentences. If you can't name it, stop and ask the user — you'll otherwise optimize toward the current shape.
  2. Search for real callers before preserving compatibility. For each mode prop, route alias, fallback branch, or wrapper: grep for current callers. No caller → delete it, don't improve it.
  3. Reshape around the final product surface. Prefer one clear component or flow over mode flags. Split only when there's an obvious boundary — state, layout, controls, or domain commands.
  4. Move shared rules to one place. Feature flags, permissions, route gating, URL state, and command naming should not be duplicated across pages or hidden inside view components.
  5. Verify the intended flow. Test the new behavior and any deleted assumptions that affect navigation, permissions, or persisted state.

Rules

  • Optimize for the code that should exist, not the smallest diff from the old shape.
  • Delete dead compatibility paths instead of making them better.
  • Don't invent a generic framework for one feature.
  • Keep the rework scoped to what makes the final shape coherent — don't drag in unrelated cleanup.
  • Prefer names that describe product intent over implementation history (AdminDashboard over LegacyDashboardV2).

Read the full file on GitHub · 35 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 · 35 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A 4a766be48fd5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

zero-tech-debt is a skill published in the GitHub repository darkroomengineering/cc-settings (42 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 550 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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