Hard-Cut Policy

Apply a hard-cut policy by default for refactors or behavior changes that alter schemas, contracts, persisted state, routing, configuration, feature flags, enum/value sets, or architecture where old-state preservation might otherwise be retained.

Keep one canonical codepath. Remove old-shape handling. Do not preserve draft or legacy behavior unless there is concrete evidence of a real external compatibility boundary.

Default assumption

Treat previous shapes as internal draft shapes unless there is concrete evidence they are already:

• persisted external or user data
• on-disk or database state that must still load
• a wire format used across process or service boundaries
• a documented or publicly supported contract
• actively depended on outside the refactor boundary

Mere existence of old code is not proof of a compatibility obligation.

Core policy