Technical Debt Visualizer

Purpose and Intent

The technical-debt-visualizer provides a data-driven view of software quality. It helps engineering leaders and developers prioritize refactoring work by identifying files that are both complex and frequently changed—the "high-interest" technical debt.

When to Use

• Sprint Planning: Run this before a dedicated refactoring sprint to identify the best "ROI" targets.
• Architectural Reviews: Use to visualize the impact of legacy systems on the overall codebase health.
• Due Diligence: Quickly assess the health of a new or acquired repository.

When NOT to Use

• Performance Benchmarking: This tool measures code structure and maintainability, not runtime performance.
• Absolute Complexity Rating: Metrics like cyclomatic complexity are indicators, not absolute rules; some complex logic is unavoidable.

Input and Output Examples

Input

source_path: "./src"
output_format: "markdown"

Output

A markdown report highlighting "Hotspots"—files that have high complexity and low test coverage.

Error Conditions and Edge Cases

• No Git History: If run on a non-git directory, the "change frequency" metric will be unavailable.
• Unsupported Languages: Complexity analysis is language-dependent; unknown extensions will be reported with a lower confidence score.

Security and Data-Handling Considerations

• Local Scan: The analysis is performed entirely in memory on the local machine.
• No Execution: The tool uses static analysis; it never runs the code it is analyzing.