---
docType: architecture
layer: project
project: squadron
archIndex: 900
component: maintenance-and-refactoring
dateCreated: 20260325
dateUpdated: 20260325
status: in_progress
---

# Architecture: Maintenance and Refactoring

## Overview

This is a cross-cutting initiative that provides a home for maintenance work, tech debt reduction, refactoring, and operational improvements that don't belong to any specific feature initiative. Items here typically span multiple subsystems or address concerns that emerged during feature development.

Unlike feature initiatives, this initiative has no milestone targets or completion criteria — it is an ongoing container for work that keeps the codebase healthy.

## Scope

Work that belongs here:

- **Tech debt**: Code that works but should be restructured for clarity, performance, or maintainability
- **Refactoring**: Extracting abstractions, consolidating duplicated logic, improving module boundaries
- **Tooling and CI**: Build system improvements, test infrastructure, developer experience
- **Dependency management**: Version bumps, migration to newer APIs, removing unused dependencies
- **Bug fixes**: Non-trivial bugs that don't belong to an active feature slice
- **Operational**: Logging, error handling, configuration improvements that span subsystems

Work that does **not** belong here:

- New features or capabilities (use the appropriate feature initiative)
- Work scoped entirely within an active feature slice (handle in that slice)

## Guidelines

- Slices in this initiative should be small and focused — prefer many small slices over few large ones
- Each slice should be independently deliverable
- No strict ordering required — slices can be picked up based on priority
- Use standard slice design and task breakdown process, but lighter-weight given the maintenance nature
