Staging Diff Protocol

The protocol

Before making ANY judgment about staging content:

1. Diff the staging version against the current plugin version
2. Read every change
3. Reason about what the changes do: improvements? new features? bug fixes? different approaches to the same problem?
4. Merge improvements into the plugin version when staging is better in some aspects and plugin is better in others
5. Only then decide: promote as-is, merge and promote, or request changes

The diff command

ssh -n "$NAS_HOST" "cat <staging-path>" | diff - <local-tile-path>

What "stale" means

"Stale" means the diff is empty — literally zero changes. Everything else requires reasoning. A file with the same name may have significant improvements that the plugin version doesn't have. Never declare content "already promoted" based on the filename or timestamp.