/design-debt-tracker

name: design-debt-tracker
description: Use when critique or review produces deferred findings, when checking accumulated design compromises, or when deciding what to address in the next iteration. Maintains a living register of design debt — the minor issues, future-iteration notes, and conscious compromises that accumulate across a project

Design Debt Tracker

Design debt is every conscious compromise the team makes and every minor issue deferred to "next time." Like technical debt, it compounds. Unlike technical debt, most teams don't track it — so it disappears into the gap between what was shipped and what was intended.

This skill maintains a living register that captures debt as it's created, tracks it across iterations, and surfaces it when decisions are being made.

Why This Exists

The design-critic classifies findings as Critical, Major, Minor, and Note. Critical and Major get fixed. Minor and Note get a shrug and "fix if time allows." They rarely get fixed because no one remembers them.

The accessibility-reviewer does the same — Minor issues with specific fixes that never happen because they're buried in a report that no one reopens.

Every "fix if time allows" is a promise to a persona. This skill makes those promises visible.

When to Use

• **After critique** — when the design-critic produces Minor or Note findings that won't be fixed this round
• **After accessibility review** — when the accessibility-reviewer flags Minor issues that are deferred
• **After a fix round** — when not all issues were addressed and some were consciously deferred
• **At project start** — to review accumulated debt from previous iterations
• **Before planning** — to decide which debt items to address in the next cycle
• **On user request** — "show me the design debt" or "what did we defer?"

The Register

Design debt lives in a `## Design Debt Register` section in `design-state.md`. One register per project. It persists across iterations.

Register Format

## Design Debt Register

_Items: [count] | Critical: [count] | Oldest: [date]_

| ID | Date | Source | Severity | What | Who is affected | Suggested fix | Status | Notes |
|----|------|--------|----------|------|----------------|---------------|--------|-------|
| DD-001 | 2025-01-15 | design-critic | Minor | Settings form shows all fields at once — cognitive load | Persona: Jamie (cognitive disability) | Progressive disclosure with sections | Open | Deferred from v1 — setup is one-time flow |
| DD-002 | 2025-01-15 | accessibility-reviewer | Minor | Category colour strips lack icon backup | Users with colour vision deficiency | Add icon per category alongside colour | Open | |
| DD-003 | 2025-01-16 | design-critic | Note | Empty state illustration is placeholder | All users | Commission illustration that matches brand | Open | Low priority — functional without it |
| DD-004 | 2025-01-15 | accessibility-reviewer | Minor | Toast notifications auto-dismiss before screen reader finishes | Screen reader users | Extend timeout to 8s or add persistent log | Resolved | Fixed in v1.1 |

Field Definitions

| Field | What goes here | |-------|---------------| | **ID** | Sequential identifier (DD-001, DD-002, ...). Never reuse IDs | | **Date** | When the debt was recorded | | **Source** | Which agent or review identified it (design-critic, accessibility-reviewer, design-lead, user, etc.) | | **Severity** | The original severity classification: Minor or Note (Critical and Major should be fixed, not deferred) | | **What** | Specific description of the issue — not "needs improvement" but "form shows 12 fields at once" | | **Who is affected** | Which personas or user groups bear the cost of this debt. Be specific | | **Suggested fix** | Actionable recommendation from the original review | | **Status** | Open, Resolved, Accepted, or Escalated | | **Notes** | Why it was deferred, context, related items |

Status Definitions

| Status | Meaning | |--------|---------| | **Open** | Identified, not yet addressed. This is a promise to come back | | **Resolved** | Fixed in a subsequent iteration. Record which iteration | | **Accepted** | Consciously decided this is not worth fixing. Requires user approval and a rationale | | **Escalated** | Was Minor, but accumulated evidence or changing context makes it Major. Needs attention |

Process

Step 1: Capture Debt (After Review)

When the design-critic or accessibility-reviewer completes a review:

1. Read their findings 2. Identify all Minor and Note severity items that will NOT be fixed in this round 3. For each deferred item, create a register entry with all fields populated 4. Append to the Design Debt Register in `design-state.md` 5. Update the summary line (item count, critical count, oldest date)

**Do not capture items that are being fixed.** The register tracks debt, not the fix list. If it's getting fixed now, it doesn't belong here.

Step 2: Review Debt (At Project Start or Before Planning)

When starting a new iteration or planning cycle:

1. Read the current Design Debt Register 2. Check for escalation triggers (see below) 3. Present a debt summary to the user:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  DESIGN DEBT SUMMARY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Open items: [count]
  By severity: [X] Minor, [Y] Note
  Oldest unresolved: [date] ([age])

  ACCESSIBILITY DEBT:
  • [count] items affecting users with disabilities
  • Most affected: [persona or user group]

  TOP CANDIDATES FOR THIS CYCLE:
  1. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]
  2. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]
  3. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]

  ESCALATED (was Minor, now needs attention):
  • [DD-XXX] [description] — [escalation reason]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4. Ask the user which items to include in the current cycle's plan 5. Items the user selects get added to the design plan as tasks

Step 3: Escalation Check

Debt items should b