One-page tech-debt overview of a repo: marker counts (by marker, directory, language), the 5 oldest markers, top authors, markers added per quarter (trend), median age, and how many reference a ticket (TODO(alice): ..., FIXME[JIRA-9], #123) versus orphans. Age and author come from git blame --porcelain -w -M on the marker lines. Default markers: TODO FIXME HACK XXX BUG; pass markers=["TODO","NOTE"] to change. Only real comments count: markers in strings, URLs, regexes and identifiers like TODOS or todo_list are ignored. include_docstrings=True also reads Python triple-quoted docstrings. dir_depth sets how many path components group the by_directory counts.

List markers oldest first, each with file:line, text, parsed tickets, the date it was added, its age in days, the author and the commit (from git blame, mailmap applied; lines not yet committed say "uncommitted"). Filters: markers (e.g. ["FIXME"]), path (glob such as "src/**/.py" or ".ts"), author (substring of name or email, or the (name) in TODO(name)), older_than ("90d", "12w", "6m", "2y"), has_ticket (true = only ticketed, false = only orphans). limit caps the output (default 50); the reply says how many matched in total.

Old markers split by whether their file is still alive. 'hot': the file had >= min_commits commits in the last active_window (people keep editing next to a stale TODO - fix or delete it); 'cooling': 1 commit; 'dead': untouched (forgotten, candidate for removal). older_than and active_window accept 90d / 12w / 6m / 2y. Needs a git repository.

Trace one TODO through history. Give location="src/app.py:42" (a line in the working tree) or text="TODO: remove after v2" (searched in all history). Reports the commit that last touched the line (blame -w -M), the blame origin with copy detection (-C -C: moved from another file?), and the commit where that text FIRST appeared (git log -S, or -G when regex=true) with later commits that changed its occurrence count. If a later commit only reworded or reformatted the line, first_appearance shows the true age. Needs a git repository.

Files where debt and churn coincide: debt items (markers + lint/type suppressions) combined with commits and lines changed over the since window (from git log --numstat), ranked by a score (formula in the reply) with debt per 1000 lines. These are the places where debt costs the most because people keep working there. Needs a git repository.

Cheap debt signals without git: files over max_file_lines, functions over max_function_lines, deepest nesting (indent levels or brace depth), commented-out code blocks (3+ consecutive code-shaped comment lines), and suppression counts by kind and directory (# noqa, type: ignore, pylint: disable, @ts-ignore, @ts-expect-error, eslint-disable, #[allow(...)], @SuppressWarnings, nolint, rubocop:disable, shellcheck disable ...). Line counters are heuristics (they do not parse code). path is a glob filter.