ContextDebt

Context debt is the expired code your AI reads — and you pay for — every day: workarounds for bugs fixed upstream years ago, polyfills for browsers you no longer support, retry logic tuned for defaults that no longer exist. The reason died; the code stayed.

Try it now

npx contextdebt

We ran it on 1,813 of the most-starred repos on GitHub — results and every claim, re-checkable: contextdebt.dev/report

Run it inside any JS/TS, WordPress/PHP, or Python repository. In seconds you get:

• every self-admitted workaround in your comments (workaround, until we upgrade, TODO: remove when ..., TODO(v11): remove, Remove in v18., we can use X once we drop Y) — comments only, so an identifier like var kludge = 0 or a UI string never counts
• for comments that reference GitHub issues: whether that issue was closed as fixed — i.e. the reason your own comment cites is expired. An issue closed as "not planned", or a pull request nobody merged, is reported separately: those workarounds are permanent, not expired
• and the notes your own repository can settle, with no network at all: a deadline the author wrote that has passed (remove after Oct 28, 2025), a fix that landed at or below the lowest version your manifest supports (fixed in vite 5.1 under a ^6.4.0 peer floor), a release you have already shipped (TODO: Remove from core-js@4). A deadline written without a year is dated from the commit that introduced the line — or reported as unknown. Never guessed from today's date

      537  files scanned (0.9s)
   91,120  lines of code
       10  self-admitted workarounds (1.10 per 10k LOC)
        1  with EXPIRED reasons — the issue they cite was closed as fixed

  EXPIRED BY THE PROJECT'S OWN FLOOR — the fix is already in the lowest version this repo supports:

  packages/vitest/src/node/logger.ts:257
    // workaround for https://github.com/vitejs/vite/issues/15438, it was fixed in vite 5.1
    ↳ vite 5.1 ≤ floor 6.4.0 (peerDependencies ^6.4.0 || ^7.0.0 || ^8.0.0 in packages/vitest/package.json)
    ↳ lockfile resolves vite 8.0.11

Real output, vitest at 4944cf4988. The floor and the lockfile line were read out of the repository; nothing was asked of any network to reach that one.

Runs 100% locally. Your code never leaves your machine. The only network calls are GitHub API status lookups for issue URLs your own comments reference — and the checks above that read your own dates, manifests and version make none at all. Set GITHUB_TOKEN to raise the lookup rate limit.

Options: npx contextdebt [path] [--all] [--json]

What this is (and isn't)

This free scanner finds candidates — code whose stated reason may have expired. It deliberately says "expired reason", never "safe to delete": that the reason died is one claim, that removing the code is safe is another, and only the first is provable from a comment and a manifest. The second needs your tests and your judgement, and stays yours.

Where it cannot prove something, it says so rather than reporting a zero: a version range it refuses to read, a package no manifest declares, a deadline whose year the history could not supply. Unknown and none are different answers.

• Web: contextdebt.dev
• GitHub: github.com/ContextDebt
• X: @contextdebtdev
• Contact: hello@contextdebt.dev

MIT © ContextDebt