I kept running into the same problem in large codebases: “temporary” code almost never gets removed.
People add TODOs, FIXMEs, or quick hacks to hit a deadline, and six months later nobody remembers why they’re there or who owns them. They quietly turn into production bugs.
I built a small CLI that treats those comments as time-bounded instead of permanent. You can attach an expiry date to a TODO in the code, and when the date passes, CI fails and points to exactly where the expired code lives.
It works by:
scanning comments across any language
parsing structured annotations
and optionally using git blame to infer who added them and when
I tried to keep it simple and CI-friendly rather than tied to any particular language or linter.
Here’s the repo if anyone wants to look at the implementation:
https://github.com/jobin-404/debtbomb
I’d love feedback from people who’ve dealt with long-lived “temporary” code in production.