context debt /ˈkɒn.tekst det/ · n. — the expired code your AI reads, and you pay for, every day

Your AI reads expired code. You pay for it.

Workarounds for bugs fixed upstream years ago. Polyfills for browsers you dropped. Retries tuned for defaults that no longer exist. The reason died — the code stayed. Now your agents read it on every task, learn from it, and bill you for it.

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The Context Debt Report — 50 famous repos, every finding with receipts. No spam, ever.

OR SEE YOURS RIGHT NOW — FREE, RUNS LOCALLY
npx contextdebt
Scans your repo for self-admitted workarounds and flags the ones whose cited issues are already closed. Your code never leaves your machine.

Receipts

This is real. We checked.

Every finding comes with an evidence chain: the commit that created it, the upstream cause, and the proof that the cause is dead.

axios · ~50M downloads/week Still checks whether you're running Internet Explorer. On every page load. In 2026. Added Nov 2015 for an IE port quirk · IE retired Jun 2022 · carefully carried over in a 2024 refactor
express · the web framework Ships a workaround for a V8 bug from 2016. We benchmarked it on Node 22: 0.0% difference. Commit f90f9dde · V8 issue #4730 · dead for years, dodged on every res.json()
cal.com · Ghost · directus Workarounds referencing upstream issues that closed in 2021, 2016 and 2022 — still shipping today. Next.js #8592 at 4 call sites · buffer PR #148 merged Dec 2016 · rollup #1329
20
repos scanned so far
5.5M
lines of production code
491
self-admitted workarounds ("until we upgrade…")
3/3
sampled upstream issues: already fixed, years ago

How it works

Find it. Watch it. Prove it's safe to delete.

01 · FIND

Mine the history

We read your git history, PRs and issues to find code that exists because of an external constraint — and record exactly what condition would make it unnecessary.

02 · WATCH

Watch your lockfile, not the news

Changelogs, releases and upstream fixes — matched against the versions you actually run. When a workaround's reason dies, you hear about it. Not before.

03 · PROVE

Evidence, not vibes

Every removal proposal ships with its receipts: origin commit, upstream cause, proof the cause is dead, and your own test suite passing without it.

We never ask you to trust a diff. We hand you the evidence and you press the button. No auto-merge. Ever.