That gives me an idea: what if you had a pool of flaky/failing tests, but it was limited in size, and if you add a test to that pool that takes it over the maxi

That gives me an idea: what if you had a pool of flaky/failing tests, but it was limited in size, and if you add a test to that pool that takes it over the maximum size, you must either fix it, or evict another flaky rest by fixing it. You could use the pool capacity and size as a proxy for technical debt. Starting a new, large project? You can increase the pool size temporarily until the project reaches mvp. Periodically the size of the test pool should be evaluated, tests fixed and the pool size shrunk. Over time the overall pool size should shrink or at least stabilise.