check-stale-is-read-only
IN premise
`check_stale` never mutates the network; it returns a list of stale-node dicts and leaves all nodes unchanged — staleness detection is separated from staleness resolution.
Summary
The staleness checking function is purely diagnostic — it inspects nodes and reports which ones are stale without changing anything. This separation means you can safely call it at any time without worrying about side effects, and it leaves the decision of what to do about stale nodes entirely to the caller.
Dependents
These beliefs depend on this one:
- staleness-is-conservative-ci-gate — Staleness checking is designed as a safe CI gate: it never mutates state, only checks IN nodes, requires both source fields, and exits nonzero to fail the pipeline
Details
| Source | entries/2026/04/23/reasons_lib-check_stale-check_stale.md |