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01Issue
FeatureShippedSwamp Club
Assigneesstack72

#298 quality rubric: don't penalize extensions whose upstream constrains them to a single platform

Opened by bixu · 5/8/2026· Shipped 5/8/2026

Problem

The platforms-two rubric factor (1 point) is awarded when platforms: is either empty (= universal) or has ≥2 entries. A single-platform manifest — which is the only truthful answer when an extension depends on a platform-restricted upstream — earns 0/1, capping the score at 11/12 (91%) regardless of the extension's actual quality.

Concrete case

@hivemq/mudroom wraps apple/container, which is an Apple-Silicon-only macOS system component. The truthful platform list is exactly:

platforms:
  - darwin-aarch64

Both rubric-passing alternatives are wrong:

  • Empty platforms: tells swamp extension pull's compatibility filter the extension is universal, letting it install on Linux / Intel Mac where it would fail at first run.
  • Adding a fake second platform (e.g. linux-x86_64) misleads users and swamp extension pull for the same reason.

So the only way to earn the 12th point is to lie about platform support, which actively harms users. We're choosing 11/12 over a misleading manifest, but it's a frustrating tradeoff for a real limitation that's not a quality issue.

Proposed scope

Recognize single-platform manifests as a distinct, valid case rather than a rubric miss. Two possible shapes:

  1. Award platforms-two when platforms: has ≥1 entry and the manifest declares an upstream platform constraint (e.g. a new platformReason: field naming the system dep, similar in spirit to additionalFiles:'s explicit-allowlist model). Honest single-platform manifests opt in; lazy ones still don't earn.
  2. Collapse platforms-one and platforms-two into one factor — "platforms field is present and matches reality" — and stop using platform breadth as a quality proxy entirely.

Components affected

  • Quality rubric definition (platforms-one / platforms-two factors and their remediation strings).
  • Manifest schema, if option 1 introduces a new field.
  • swamp extension quality scoring path and --json output shape.
  • Documentation that describes the rubric.

High-level approach

Platform breadth is not a proxy for quality when the upstream constrains it. The rubric should distinguish "extension is honest about its platform support" from "extension supports many platforms" and reward the former without requiring the latter.

02Bog Flow
OPENTRIAGEDIN PROGRESSSHIPPED+ 1 MOREASSIGNED+ 2 MOREREVIEW+ 3 MOREPR_MERGEDSHIPPED

Shipped

5/8/2026, 1:03:04 PM

Click a lifecycle step above to view its details.

03Sludge Pulse
stack72 assigned stack725/8/2026, 12:37:24 PM

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