Debt skills

Review the cost the next change will pay.

The Vølven skills teach agents to find debt pressure: hidden contracts, brittle tests, unsafe dynamic behavior, deploy friction, upgrade friction, and trapped knowledge.

Start with the core skill Use budgets in Pest

Skill map

Same doctrine. Local failure modes.

The core skill defines what counts as debt. The language skills translate that model into the places each ecosystem tends to hide cost.

Core

Use this when the review needs the general debt model and no language-specific lens.

Read core docs

PHP

Weak arrays, unsafe mixed, magic workflow strings, misleading PHPDoc, and shallow tests.

Read PHP docs

Laravel

Observers, jobs, migrations, validation drift, policy drift, factories, and lifecycle traps.

Read Laravel docs

Python

Implicit schemas, mutable globals, swallowed exceptions, async drift, and scripts that became systems.

Read Python docs

TypeScript

Unsafe casts, trusted runtime data, duplicated state, React business logic, and config drift.

Read TypeScript docs

JavaScript

Hidden object shapes, async mixing, mutable shared state, utility drift, and framework magic.

Read JavaScript docs

How to use them

Run the right lens at the right moment.

Vølven works best after normal checks have passed. Let formatters, type checkers, tests, and framework tools clear the cheap noise. Then ask what still makes the next change expensive.

Pick the review lens

Use the core skill for general debt review. Add the language skill when the risk lives in local framework or runtime behavior.

Review changed behavior

Focus on the code that moved and the contracts around it. Broad archaeology belongs in a separate task.

Write debt-shaped findings

Every finding needs evidence, future cost, the smallest useful fix, and the case where ignoring it is acceptable.

Ratchet what can be counted

Use the Pest plugin for deterministic PHP signals so CI blocks growth while the skill handles judgment-heavy review.

Prompt shape

Give the agent a debt job, not a vague review job.

Good debt review prompts are narrow. They tell the agent what changed, which lens to use, and which kinds of findings are out of scope.

Use this shape:

Review this diff with the Vølven PHP debt skill. Focus on future maintenance cost, hidden contracts, weak runtime boundaries, misleading tests, and suppressions. Ignore style, naming taste, and static-analysis duplicates. Findings first. Max 7 bullets.

Normal tools clear correctness noise. Vølven reviews future cost. Pest budgets stop countable debt from growing.