Developers litter every repository with comments like // TODO, // FIXME, // HACK, hoping to revisit them later. In practice those notes lack owners, priorities, or deadlines, so they linger in production and become risky to touch. The silent accumulation of technical debt turns harmless intent into hidden maintenance cost.

To force accountability, author Jake Obin built DebtBomb, an open‑source CLI that treats a comment as a timed contract. Developers replace a plain TODO with // @debtbomb(expire=2026‑02‑10, owner=pricing, reason="temporary promo logic"). During CI, DebtBomb flags expired entries, fails the build, opens or updates a Jira ticket and pings Slack, Discord, or Microsoft Teams.

Because DebtBomb only scans comment text, it works with Go, TypeScript, Python, Rust, Java, Bash and any language that supports comments. Early adopters report fewer stray TODOs and clearer ownership. Watch for broader integration with other issue trackers and potential policy enforcement as teams treat expired debt as a deployment blocker.