Tech Debt Analysis

Instructions

Identify technical debt, quantify its cost, and produce an actionable remediation plan.

Debt taxonomy (Fowler’s Technical Debt Quadrant):

Debt categories to audit:

• Architectural debt: monolith that should be modules; missing abstraction layers; platform-specific code that should be shared
• Code quality debt: duplicated logic; overly complex functions; missing type annotations; magic numbers/strings
• Dependency debt: outdated libraries with security or compatibility risks; deprecated APIs
• Testing debt: missing unit tests for critical paths; no integration tests for external APIs; no regression suite
• Documentation debt: undocumented public APIs; outdated README; missing architecture decision records
• Security debt: known vulnerabilities deferred; weak authentication patterns; unrotated credentials
• Performance debt: N+1 queries; missing indexes; full KB file loads instead of section access; disabled caching

Debt inventory format:

Priority scoring formula:

Priority = (Risk × Impact × Strategic Alignment) / Effort Risk: 1 (cosmetic) to 4 (security/data loss) Impact: 1 (affects edge case) to 4 (affects core flow daily) Strategic Alignment: 1 (low priority product) to 3 (flagship product) Effort: 1 (1-2 hours) to 4 (1+ week)

Remediation plan structure:

## Phase 1: Immediate (this sprint) — P1 items only
[Critical risk items; security vulnerabilities]

## Phase 2: Short-term (next 1-2 sprints) — P2 items
[High-impact, moderate effort; architectural improvements]

## Phase 3: Medium-term (next quarter) — P3 items
[Valuable improvements that require planning]

## Phase 4: Backlog — P4 items
[Low-priority improvements; address when touching related code]

ITI-specific debt patterns to flag:

• Custom Claude API client instead of ITI_Claude_API → migrate to shared library
• Full KB file loading instead of ITI_KB_Parser::extract_relevant() → performance + token debt
• No ITI_Conversation_Summarizer in products with 4+ conversation turns → experience debt
• Missing prompt caching (prompt_caching: false) → cost debt
• Agent logic duplicated across products → shared library candidate
• WordPress plugin without class-iti-shared-loader.php → integration debt

Outputs: Tech debt inventory table, priority-scored remediation plan in 4 phases, debt trend analysis (growing/stable/shrinking), ROI estimate for top 5 fixes (time saved / risk reduced per hour invested).