Code Quality Scoring
A vendor-neutral framework for quantifying and communicating software quality at the application and portfolio level. Most quality skills tell you how to fix one finding; this skill tells you how to score an entire codebase, estimate the cost of its debt, and explain both to people who do not read code.
Source note: The scoring frameworks below are derived from CAST Highlight's code quality indicators and methodology (https://doc.casthighlight.com/). They are paraphrased and re-expressed as a vendor-neutral model. Threshold bands and debt-density figures are CAST's proprietary calibration from their AppMarq benchmark dataset; they are presented here as attributed reference ranges, not as universal standards. Where CAST defers to open standards (COCOMO II for effort, SPDX/choosealicense for licenses, CWE/CVE for security), cite those primary sources.
When to Use This Skill
Use it when the question is "how healthy is this codebase, and what should we do first?" — for example:
- Onboarding to an unfamiliar codebase and needing a health baseline.
- Deciding whether to refactor, rewrite, or retire an application.
- Prioritizing remediation across many applications (a portfolio).
- Estimating the effort/cost a backlog of quality defects represents.
- Presenting a quality/debt position to a manager, product owner, or executive.
Do not reach for it to fix a single defect — for that, use the language-specific
quality skills (Python/Java/PHP/TS quality anti-patterns) and code-review-standards.
Core Concept 1 — Software Health is a composite
Treat overall code health as the straight average of three independent dimensions, each scored 0–100. This decomposition (derived from CAST Highlight) is useful because each dimension maps to a different class of fix and a different stakeholder concern:
| Dimension | A.k.a. | Measures | Maps to checklist family | |-----------|--------|----------|--------------------------| | Resiliency / Robustness | Software Resiliency | Will it break in production? Error handling, defensive coding, reliability | Robustness, Security | | Agility / Changeability | Software Agility | Can a team understand and change it quickly? Documentation, readability, naming | Changeability, Transferability | | Elegance / Efficiency | Software Elegance | Is it lean? Complexity, dead code, algorithmic/data-access efficiency | Efficiency |
Software Health = avg(Resiliency, Agility, Elegance)
Threshold bands (attributed to CAST's calibration — use as guidance, not gospel):
| Band | Health | Agility (note the different cutoffs per dimension) | |------|--------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 🔴 Low / Red | below ~53 | below ~54 | | 🟠 Medium / Orange | ~53–75 | ~54–69 | | 🟢 High / Green | above ~75 | above ~69 |
The key insight is not the exact numbers — it is that each dimension has its own distribution and its own remediation strategy, so a single blended grade hides the story. A codebase can be green on Resiliency (rarely crashes) yet red on Agility (nobody can change it safely). See software-health-framework.md.
Core Concept 2 — Technical debt is an effort-to-fix estimate
Express debt as estimated remediation effort, derived from violation density scaled by a per-line-of-code debt factor that varies by language. Higher-level / verbose languages (Java, JavaScript, PHP) tend to carry more debt per LOC than concise scripting languages (Python, shell). Always present these as attributed ranges ("Java's median debt density is roughly 3–4× Python's per industry benchmarks") rather than copied exact figures, and convert to money/time only with explicit assumptions stated. CAST's maintenance-effort model itself builds on COCOMO II. See technical-debt-estimation.md.
Core Concept 3 — Cloud readiness is scan + survey
Cloud maturity is the average of a code-scan score (blockers and boosters detected in source — e.g. hard-coded file paths and host names are blockers; statelessness and externalized config are boosters) and a survey score (team/operational factors the code cannot reveal). See cloud-maturity.md.
Core Concept 4 — Open-source safety is a three-part index
Third-party risk is the average of Security (CVE count weighted by criticality),
License Compliance (share of low- vs medium- vs high-risk licenses), and
Obsolescence (version gap to latest). This cross-references the Phase 1 OSS Safety
work — do not duplicate it. See open-source-safety.md,
and for remediation mechanics use universal/security/security-scanning and
toolchains/universal/dependency/dependency-audit, which already carry the license-risk tiers and
CVE-weighting framing.
Core Concept 5 — Prioritize by business impact
A defect-dense application nobody depends on is lower priority than a moderately-flawed revenue-critical one. Blend a technical risk score with a business impact score (failure consequences, audience size, release/maintenance effort) so remediation is ranked by risk to the business, not by raw defect count. CAST formalizes this as a ROAR-style index (risk weighted by business impact). See quality-communication-guide.md.
How to Apply (quick workflow)
- Score the three health dimensions from your existing linters/scanners — map each tool's findings into Resiliency / Agility / Elegance, average to a Health score, place on the red/orange/green band.
- Estimate debt — multiply violation density by the language's debt factor (as an attributed range), express as effort (hours/FTE) with assumptions stated.
- Score OSS safety and cloud readiness if relevant to the decision.
- Weight by business impact to rank applications/modules.
- Communicate using the stakeholder framing — lead with risk and money, not rule names.
Anti-Patterns
- Reporting a single blended grade and hiding the dimension that is actually red.
- Quoting debt in exact dollars without stating the LOC, hourly rate, and density assumptions — present ranges and assumptions.
- Treating CAST's threshold numbers as universal law — they are one vendor's calibration; cite them as reference context.
- Ranking remediation by defect count instead of by business-weighted risk.
- Duplicating the OSS license tiers here — cross-reference the Phase 1 references.
Navigation
- Software Health Framework — the Resiliency/Agility/Elegance decomposition, bands, and how to map linter output onto it.
- Technical Debt Estimation — effort-to-fix model, per-language debt-density ranges (attributed), COCOMO II linkage, worked example.
- Cloud Maturity — scan vs survey, code blockers and boosters, how to read a cloud-readiness score.
- Open Source Safety — the Security/License/ Obsolescence index; cross-references to the dependency-audit and security-scanning skills.
- Quality Communication Guide — business- impact framing, ROAR-style prioritization, presenting scores to non-technical stakeholders.
Related Skills
- code-review-standards — per-finding checklist with Efficiency + Transferability dimensions (Phase 1); this skill aggregates those families into scores.
- security-scanning / dependency-audit — OSS safety remediation mechanics.
- software-patterns — architectural signals that low Elegance/Agility scores point to.