Staleness discipline

Staleness Discipline

Define what "stale" means for a source store in the Mall, and how to remove an entry from sources/supported-stores.json without breaking downstream consumers.

The Mall is read-mostly: downstream agents install from upstream at pinned refs. Pruning a source from the registry stops new catalog entries from that source but does not retroactively break existing installs (those still resolve to their pinned SHA). The discipline below keeps the catalog honest.

When to Use

• Weekly catalog-refresh PR shows a store with degraded signals (no recent commits, broken license signal, archived upstream)
• A reviewer flags a store as no longer fit during PR review
• /prune-source invocation

What "stale" means

An entry is stale if any of these apply:

Signal	Threshold	Where it shows up
Remote unreachable	bootstrap-sources.cjs clone fails in 2+ consecutive cron runs	Workflow log
Upstream archived	fetch-github-stats.cjs returns archived: true	scoring/github-stats.json
No upstream activity	last_commit older than 18 months	scoring/github-stats.json + maintenance signal = 0
License changed unfavorably	SPDX id changed to NOASSERTION or to a more restrictive license	scoring/github-stats.json license field
Replaced by superior alternative	Another source covers the same domain better with higher trust scores	Per-store trust delta in scoring/trust-audit.md
Persistent scan failure	scan-sources.cjs produces 0 plugins for 2+ consecutive runs after previously producing >0	catalog/stores/<name>.json plugins array shrinks to 0
Schema or shape drift	normalize-frontmatter.cjs warns or errors on >50% of plugins from that source	Normalize log

Classification

Stale signal	Action
Remote unreachable, but upstream still alive on GitHub	Refresh — fix remote URL, don't prune
Upstream archived but plugins still valuable	Keep (note archived in PR review); catalog continues to surface them with degraded maintenance score
Upstream archived + no activity for years	Prune
License changed to unclear or restrictive	Surface in PR review; user decides whether to keep with degraded license signal or prune
Replaced by superior alternative	Prune the worse entry; downstream consumers can opt into the better one via --from-store override
Persistent scan failure with no clear cause	Investigate pluginDir first — upstream may have renamed the folder. Only prune after fix attempts fail.

Pruning procedure

Pruning is always reversible by re-add. The two-step removal (comment-out → observe → delete) is the safety net. Run via /prune-source.

1. Confirm at least one staleness signal above fires
2. Comment out the entry in sources/supported-stores.json and add // pruned-pending: YYYY-MM-DD reason: <reason> above it
3. Commit [behaviour] prune source (pending): <name> — <reason>
4. Wait one weekly cron cycle and verify the catalog-refresh PR shows:
   • The store missing from catalog/stores/
   • Plugin count drops by the right amount in catalog/index.json
   • No other unintended diffs
5. After a clean cycle, delete the commented-out entry and commit [behaviour] prune source (delete): <name>
6. Record the decision in docs/curation-log.md

Re-add procedure

If a pruned store revives (un-archived, link restored, license clarified):

1. Run full store-evaluation — past acceptance does not transfer
2. If it passes, add a fresh entry via /add-source
3. Record the re-add in docs/curation-log.md

Pruning anti-patterns

Anti-pattern	Correction
Hard-deleting the entry in one commit	Always use the two-step (comment-out → observe → delete) so the catalog refresh PR can verify the impact cleanly
Skipping the observation cycle	Without one clean cron run, you don't know whether the catalog-refresh PR will surface only the expected diffs
Pruning multiple stores in one commit	Each prune is a decision; bundle wastes the audit trail and makes one bad prune undoable without reverting the others
Pruning for "I don't like the maintainer" or subjective reasons	The staleness signals are the bar; the commit message must cite the firing signal
Pruning plugin-mall itself	Constitutional to this Mall — would break the catalog's ability to surface first-party plugins

Output template (PR comment for a prune proposal)

**Prune candidate: `<store-name>`**

Staleness signals firing:
- [x] <signal 1>: <evidence from workflow log / github-stats / trust-audit>
- [ ] ...

Action: comment-out now, delete after one clean cron cycle.

Downstream impact: <known consumers, if any; otherwise "no known consumers; downstream agents that depend on this store can pin to a specific SHA before deletion">

Falsifiability

This skill is wrong if any of the following occur by 2026-08-29 (90 days):

• Pruned stores are re-added within 30 days ≥2 times in a quarter (staleness signals miscalibrated — pruning prematurely)
• A store flagged as stale by these signals is still being actively used by a known downstream consumer (signals threshold too aggressive)
• The two-step procedure causes a registry-vs-catalog drift that ships ≥1 time (the reversible pattern is leaking)

Track outcomes in docs/curation-log.md tagged [STALENESS].

Related

• source-inventory — adding and editing registry entries
• store-evaluation — gate for re-add
• mall-self-curation — the pipeline this discipline keeps clean
• mall-maintenance-rules — always-on routing
• /prune-source prompt