Brooks Debt

Brooks Debt is a Quality skill for Claude Code, published by hyhmrright in brooks-lint.

1.4K stars61 forkson hyhmrright/brooks-lintAdded 2026/08/19+6% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/14

agent-skillsai-code-reviewarchitecture-reviewauto-fixclaude-codeclaude-code-pluginclean-architecturecode-healthcode-qualitycode-reviewcode-smellscodex-cli-plugindeepseek-harnessdeveloper-toolsdsh-plugingemini-cli-extensionrefactoringstatic-analysistech-debttest-quality

Install in seconds

Install Brooks Debt

Copy Brooks Debt into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/hyhmrright/brooks-lint/tree/main/skills/brooks-debt ~/.claude/skills/brooks-debt

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/hyhmrright/brooks-lint.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/brooks-debt/SKILL.md in hyhmrright/brooks-lint
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/brooks-debt
Collection: One of 9 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Quality — 1354 skills

What Brooks Debt does

Brooks Debt identifies, classifies, and prioritizes maintainability problems and builds a refactoring roadmap using twelve classic engineering books. Use it to plan what to clean up first or justify refactoring to management.

Brooks Debt is cataloged under Quality on DirSkills. Brooks Debt comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, ai-code-review, architecture-review, auto-fix and claude-code.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Brooks-Lint — Tech Debt Assessment

Setup

Read in order:

../_shared/common.md — Iron Law, Project Config, Report Template, Health Score
../_shared/source-coverage.md — book coverage, exceptions, tradeoffs
../_shared/decay-risks.md — symptom definitions and source attributions
debt-guide.md (this directory) — the debt classification framework

Process

Scope: if the user did not describe the codebase or point to specific areas, apply Auto Scope Detection (../_shared/common.md) first.

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Brooks Debt

What else does hyhmrright publish alongside Brooks Debt?
Brooks Debt is one of 9 skills that DirSkills catalogs from hyhmrright/brooks-lint, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Brooks Audit, Brooks Harness and Brooks Health. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Brooks Debt does, and is maintained by hyhmrright in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the hyhmrright/brooks-lint page.
How does Brooks Debt compare to other Quality skills?
Brooks Debt ranks #690 by stars among the 1354 Quality skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Benchmark, Benchmark Optimization Loop and API Design Patterns. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Brooks Debt against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.