Forking your own typo is soothing; waiting on opaque blobs is not. When teammates can read logs and diffs, reputational humility improves merge tone—compare what common open definitions expect when lawyers ask for receipts.

You pick the deprecation bedtime story

Sunsetting features on your rhythm beats quarterly vendor renames pretending to smell like progress. Write what “paused mode” means so panic refactors seldom surprise payroll.