Technical Debt Register

Purpose

This register tracks known technical debt so temporary compromises remain visible and reviewable.

Technical debt is allowed only when it is explicit, scoped, and has a proposed resolution path.

Adding Debt Entries

Add a debt entry when a PR introduces or discovers a temporary workaround, known limitation, compatibility compromise, implementation shortcut, or follow-up required to remove risk.

Debt entries should reference related PRs or issues whenever possible.

Priorities

P0 - blocks safe development or production use.
P1 - high risk or likely to affect many future changes.
P2 - important but not blocking current phase.
P3 - cleanup or maintainability improvement.

Temporary Hacks Policy

Temporary hacks must be documented in PR Notes, added to this register when they survive merge, isolated from OpenCart core files, and removed or replaced as soon as the planned system exists.

A temporary hack without a removal path is not temporary.

Debt Review Process

Review debt before starting a new roadmap phase, before release engineering work, when a related system is touched, or when debt starts causing repeated PR notes or review comments.

Entry Template

Debt ID

DEBT-0000

Description

Short description of the debt.

Reason

Why it exists and why it was accepted.

Risk

What can go wrong if it remains.

Proposed Resolution

How to remove or reduce the debt.

Priority

P0, P1, P2, or P3.

Links to related GitHub PRs or issues.