Thanks, I'm probably a kook but I've never wanted to put any non-product, user-visible feature-related tasks on the board with story points (tests, code cleanup

Thanks, I'm probably a kook but I've never wanted to put any non-product, user-visible feature-related tasks on the board with story points (tests, code cleanup, etc) and just folded that into the related user work (mainly to avoid some product person thinking they "own" that and can make technical decisions). So the product velocity didn't exactly go up, but you are now producing less technical debt (hopefully) with a similar velocity, sounds reasonable.