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stale-counts findings in SKILL.md files (Home-Lab, Steam) need investigation #13
Description
Activity
Cross-link: see #12 for the broader validate-counts vs stale-counts reconciliation.
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on Apr 25, 2026 Investigation complete. 5 findings categorized:
- 4 category A (genuine count claims): 3 currently accurate, 1 stale
- 1 category C (false positive from example dialogue)
- 0 category B (narrative aggregates)
Resolution:
- Steam content-fix PR fix: correct stale tool count in steam-api-reference SKILL.md Steam-Cursor-Plugin#13 (merged 2026-04-25 23:04 UTC, commit
c9cea61a): corrects the off-by-one drift onsteam-api-reference/SKILL.mdline 123 (the one stale finding). - Drift-check enhancement drift-check: stale-counts should skip example dialogue sections in SKILL.md #37: addresses the category C false positive systematically.
- Comment on Reconcile validate-counts vs drift checker stale-counts pattern across ecosystem #12 documents the "do not suppress SKILL.md" finding for the eventual policy session.
Full investigation written up in
dtd13-investigation.md(workspace root).The drift-check stale-counts pass did its job: caught a real off-by-one bug that had drifted unnoticed. Validates the infrastructure investment from Phase 2.
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on Apr 25, 2026 Correction to my closing comment above.
The framing "drift-check did its job. Validates the infrastructure investment from Phase 2." was incorrect.
DTD#12 investigation (resolved in #38, shipped as v1.9.0) revealed that the
cursor-pluginandmcp-servertype-levelskip_checksentries instandards/drift-checker.config.jsonwere suppressingstale-countsentirely (whole-check skip, not file-scoped). The Steam off-by-one bug was found by manually runningstale_counts.pyduring DTD#13 investigation — not by the production drift-check workflow, which hadstale-countssuppressed forSteam-Cursor-Plugin.The bug fix in TMHSDigital/Steam-Cursor-Plugin#13 is still correct (the SKILL.md content matches reality now). But the verification narrative was wrong: production drift-check did not catch this; manual investigation did.
DTD#12's resolution removes the over-broad suppression and encodes the AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md narrative-aggregate policy in the check itself (plus DTD#37's example-dialogue skip). Empirical post-merge verification on Steam now surfaces 4 stale-counts findings — all accurate (because Steam#13 fixed the off-by-one), but the check is actually running against SKILL.md files for the first time since v1.7.5.
Net: production drift-check now actually catches this class of bug across all tool repos. Closing my earlier overstatement of the verification chain.
Background
Phase 2 Session D-0 audit ran the drift checker against all 9 tool repos.
stale-countsproduced 62 warnings total.61 of 62 warnings live in repo-root agent files (
AGENTS.md,CLAUDE.md) where aggregate narratives like177 skills, 71 rulesare clearly stale ecosystem-summary boilerplate.5 warnings are different: they are inside
skills/<name>/SKILL.mdfiles, where the aggregate count may be legitimate technical content rather than stale narrative.Specific findings
skills/secrets-management/SKILL.mdskills/steam-api-reference/SKILL.mdHypothesis
These may be matches against patterns like:
"3 firewall rules"(Home-Lab secrets-management referencing security configurations)"5 API tools"or"12 commands"(Steam API reference describing Steam Web API surface)If so, these are technical specifications, not stale ecosystem narratives. The drift checker's regex (
\b\d+\s+(skills?|rules?|MCP\s+tools?|tools?|commands?|hooks?)\b) cannot distinguish between"3 firewall rules"(legitimate domain content) and"71 rules"(stale ecosystem summary).What needs investigating
stale-countsto skip them. Options:drift-ignorepragma in the SKILL.md frontmatter (workable today, but burdens tool authors with manual annotation).stale_counts_skip_patterns(most flexible).Related