claude-ops:plugins: confirm the orphan sweep removes a removed marketplace's cache tree (probe planted 2026-10-01 on melo-desk-001 WSL, recheck on or after 2026-10-15)

[kyle-sexton]

Summary

Follow-up to #3763. On 2026-09-06 (Claude Code 2.1.263) a throwaway marketplace p3759mkt was installed, uninstalled, and removed on the authoring machine. The uninstall left ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt/ucprobe/0.0.1/ on disk with a .orphaned_at marker of 1788678603191. The tree was deliberately left in place so the documented 14-day orphan sweep can be observed removing a tree whose marketplace is no longer registered.

Ask

On or after 2026-09-21, with at least one plugin still installed on that machine, check whether ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt/ is gone. Record the outcome in plugins/claude-ops/skills/plugins/context/scope-semantics.md under "marketplace remove leaves the cache tree, marked for the orphan sweep", replacing the "inferred from the documented rule, not yet observed" sentence with the observation and its CLI version. If the tree is still there, the docs' sweep rule does not cover removed marketplaces and the section needs to say so.

Environment

Windows 11 Pro, Claude Code 2.1.263 at the time of the probe.

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI during triage.

Claimed for triage by autonomous lane instance vm-triage-202609050304. Lease expires 2026-09-06T19:40:00Z. This is a triage claim only, not an execution claim; the item stays unassigned and available to the worker lane once briefed.

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Generated by Claude Code

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI during triage.

Triage verdict

Category: Task (confirmed, deliberately deferred). State: briefed → human-gated. Work class: read-only. Priority: low.

Verification (2026-09-06, against current main)

The target of the recheck exists and says what the issue says it says. The claude-ops plugins-skill scope-semantics document carries a section titled for marketplace remove leaving the cache tree marked for the orphan sweep, and within it the sentence recording that the sweep's behavior toward a removed marketplace is inferred from the documented rule, not yet observed. That is precisely the sentence this issue exists to replace with an observation. The section also already carries its own recheck trigger for release notes touching marketplace removal or the orphan sweep.

The predecessor #3763 is closed, so this is the surviving open thread on that finding.

Why human-gated

Three separate blockers, any one of which is sufficient:

1. The date has not arrived. Today is 2026-09-06; the observation window opens on or after 2026-09-21. There is nothing to observe for another fifteen days.
2. It is bound to one specific machine. The probe marketplace was installed, uninstalled, and removed on the authoring Windows host, and the cache tree with its orphan marker was deliberately left in place there. The evidence is that filesystem and no other. A fresh environment cannot answer the question, and re-running the setup elsewhere would restart the fourteen-day clock rather than read the existing experiment.
3. It is a physical observation, not a repository change. The work is looking at a directory on a particular computer and writing down what is there. No agent in this lane can do that.

Priority note

Set to low rather than the assessed default. This is a documentation-accuracy follow-up on a deliberately-planted experiment; nothing is broken while it waits, and the section already flags its own claim as inferred rather than observed, so the docs are not currently misleading anyone. Recording the reporter's framing: the issue itself states no severity.

What to do, on or after 2026-09-21

On the authoring machine, with at least one plugin still installed (the sweep only runs when the plugin system does), check whether the probe marketplace's cache tree is gone. Then record the outcome in the scope-semantics section named above, replacing the "inferred from the documented rule, not yet observed" sentence, and state the CLI version the observation was made on. The two outcomes are equally publishable and the issue closes either way:

• The tree is gone. The documented sweep rule does cover marketplaces that are no longer registered. Replace the inference with the observation and its date and CLI version.
• The tree is still there. The sweep rule does not cover removed marketplaces, which is the more interesting result: it means uninstalling and then removing a marketplace strands its cache permanently. The section must then say so plainly, and it is worth deciding whether that warrants its own upstream report.

Whoever takes it should also note the CLI version at observation time even if it is unchanged, since the sweep's behavior is a property of the version that ran it, not of the version that planted the marker (2.1.263).

A scheduling suggestion, not a requirement

Because the only thing standing between this item and a five-minute answer is a calendar date, it is a natural fit for a dated reminder rather than a backlog item that surfaces in every triage pass until someone notices the date. If the operator keeps a scheduled-reminder mechanism, pointing it at 2026-09-21 would take this off the frontier without losing it.

Triage claim released by vm-triage-202609050304.

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Generated by Claude Code

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI during work-items:track.

Due 2026-09-21: run ls ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt/ on the authoring machine and report whether the tree is gone.

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI during a work-items recheck.

Interim observation, 2026-09-14T13:45Z, Claude Code 2.1.270, authoring machine (Windows 11)

Not yet answerable. ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt/ucprobe/0.0.1/ is still on disk with its .orphaned_at marker 1788678603191 (2026-09-06T07:10:03Z). That marker is 8.3 days old, inside the documented ~14-day window, so its survival is expected and says nothing yet about removed marketplaces.

The sweep is live on this host and honors the 14-day line exactly. Across 628 .orphaned_at markers under ~/.claude/plugins/cache/, the oldest surviving one is melodic-software/ai-briefing/0.7.16 at 2026-08-31T13:46:03Z, 13.999 days old at observation; nothing at or past 14.0 days remains. 106 plugins are installed, so the sweep's precondition holds.

A second removed-marketplace probe exists on the same host: cache/ucprobe-mkt/ucprobe/0.0.1/ with marker 1788622170527 (2026-09-05T15:29:30Z). Neither p3759mkt nor ucprobe-mkt is in known_marketplaces.json.

Earliest meaningful recheck: 2026-09-20T07:11Z for p3759mkt (2026-09-19T15:30Z for ucprobe-mkt), plus one CLI start after that. The 2026-09-21 due date stands. Outcome then: if both trees are gone, the sweep covers removed marketplaces; if either survives past that point while melodic-software markers keep being swept, it does not, and scope-semantics.md must say so.

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Generated by Claude Code

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI during a work-items recheck.

Probe destroyed and re-planted, 2026-09-15T16:31Z, Claude Code 2.1.272, authoring machine (Windows 11)

The original probes are gone, but not because of the sweep. At 16:22Z today both ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt/ and ~/.claude/plugins/cache/ucprobe-mkt/ were absent. Their markers were 10.4 and 10.0 days old, inside the 14-day window, while the control still held: at 16:27Z the oldest surviving markers under the live melodic-software marketplace (claude-ops/0.39.2, docs-hygiene/0.21.30, provenance/0.5.0, all 2026-09-01T08:51:54Z) were 14.3 days old and still on disk, out of 964 markers. The sweep does not remove a 10-day tree while leaving a 14.3-day one, so something else removed the probes.

The transcript of a sibling session on this host (bb8bc000-ae29-47b1-b986-b7d47aad8d28, the plugin mass-install incident recovery) shows the cause: at 2026-09-15T13:27:17Z it ran rm -rf .claude/plugins/cache/p3759mkt .claude/plugins/cache/ucprobe-mkt as part of a 42 GB cache reclaim, having classified both as "unregistered orphan caches". The experiment cannot be read from the original trees, and the 2026-09-20/21 recheck is void.

One thing was observed before the deletion. The CLI debug log for a 2026-09-14T14:38:34Z start (Claude Code 2.1.270) contains the sweep's folder-retention pass visiting both removed marketplaces (home path elided):

[DEBUG] Keeping <home>\.claude\plugins\cache\p3759mkt: it still holds a directory, a symlink, a versioned archive or an entry of unknown type
[DEBUG] Keeping <home>\.claude\plugins\cache\p3759mkt\ucprobe: it still holds a directory, a symlink, a versioned archive or an entry of unknown type
[DEBUG] Keeping <home>\.claude\plugins\cache\ucprobe-mkt: ...
[DEBUG] Keeping <home>\.claude\plugins\cache\ucprobe-mkt\ucprobe: ...

So the sweep does traverse a cache folder whose marketplace is absent from known_marketplaces.json and applies the documented "remove the folder once it holds no directory or symlink" rule to it. What remains unobserved is the step before that: whether the marked version directory under it is removed at 14 days. That is the sentence scope-semantics.md still needs.

Re-planted. Same three steps as the 2026-09-06 probe, from a local marketplace kept at ~/.local/share/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ (README inside explains it):

claude plugin marketplace add ~/.local/share/p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin install ucprobe@p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin uninstall ucprobe@p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin marketplace remove p3835-orphan-probe-keep

Result: ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ucprobe/0.0.1/ on disk with .claude-plugin/ and .orphaned_at = 1789489866385 (2026-09-15T16:31:06Z). known_marketplaces.json and installed_plugins.json are byte-identical to their pre-probe copies. ~/.claude/settings.json is semantically identical (no probe entries remain) but was re-serialized with its top-level keys reordered; on 2.1.263 the file came back byte-identical, on 2.1.272 it did not. Worth a line in the doc when this closes.

Do not delete cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ by hand. Cleanup passes on this host: that tree is the experiment.

Earliest meaningful recheck: 2026-09-29T16:31Z, plus one Claude Code start after that. Outcome then: tree gone with melodic-software markers still being swept at 14 days means the sweep covers removed marketplaces; tree present past that point while those markers keep being swept means it does not.

Due 2026-09-30: run ls ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ on the authoring machine and report whether the tree is gone.

[kyle-sexton]

Authoring host scheduled for wipe, 2026-09-15 — probe void again, re-plant recipe made self-contained

The Windows 11 authoring machine that holds ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ (marker 1789489866385, 2026-09-15T16:31:06Z) is being wiped and reset. That destroys the probe tree, the ~/.local/share/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ marketplace source the previous comment points at, and the 14 .work/handoffs/ files (gitignored) that carried this chain's context. The "recheck after 2026-09-30" window is void. Nothing observed so far is lost: this thread already holds the 2026-09-06 plant, the 2026-09-15 destruction analysis, the 14.3-day control and the 2.1.270 "Keeping" debug lines.

State at wipe time: probe tree intact, control still holding (oldest melodic-software marker 14.4 days, sweep not yet run), CLI 2.1.272. So the experiment had not produced a reading before the host went away.

Re-plant on the next host (no local files needed)

Create this local marketplace anywhere (three files), then run the four commands.

p3835-orphan-probe-keep/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json

{
  "name": "p3835-orphan-probe-keep",
  "owner": { "name": "Kyle Sexton" },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "ucprobe",
      "source": "./plugins/ucprobe",
      "description": "Throwaway probe for claude-code-plugins #3835: orphan sweep on a removed marketplace. Do not delete its cache tree by hand."
    }
  ]
}

p3835-orphan-probe-keep/plugins/ucprobe/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

{
  "name": "ucprobe",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Probe plugin for claude-code-plugins #3835. No hooks, no skills."
}

p3835-orphan-probe-keep/README.md: one line saying it is the throwaway marketplace for this issue and that the cache tree must not be deleted by hand.

cp ~/.claude/plugins/known_marketplaces.json /tmp/km.before; cp ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json /tmp/ip.before; cp ~/.claude/settings.json /tmp/settings.before
claude plugin marketplace add <path>/p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin install ucprobe@p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin uninstall ucprobe@p3835-orphan-probe-keep
claude plugin marketplace remove p3835-orphan-probe-keep
ls -la ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ucprobe/0.0.1/   # expect .claude-plugin/ and .orphaned_at
cat ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ucprobe/0.0.1/.orphaned_at   # note the ms epoch; recheck is 14 days after it
diff /tmp/km.before ~/.claude/plugins/known_marketplaces.json; diff /tmp/ip.before ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json   # expect empty

settings.json may come back with top-level keys reordered on 2.1.272 (semantically identical); that qualifier belongs in the doc.

Then comment here with the marker value and the new recheck date, and retitle the issue. Any disk-hygiene or incident-cleanup pass on that host must skip cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ (the 2026-09-15 comment shows what happens otherwise).

Recheck procedure (14 days after the marker, plus at least one Claude Code start)

1. ls ~/.claude/plugins/cache/p3835-orphan-probe-keep/ — gone or not; note claude --version.
2. Control: age in days of the oldest surviving .orphaned_at under ~/.claude/plugins/cache/melodic-software/ (find … -name .orphaned_at, awk on (now - ms/1000)/86400). Under 14.0 means the sweep ran and the reading counts; at or past 14.0 the sweep has not run and the tree's presence says nothing, wait.
3. Edit plugins/claude-ops/skills/plugins/context/scope-semantics.md § "marketplace remove leaves the cache tree, marked for the orphan sweep": replace "That the sweep actually removes a marked tree under a removed marketplace is inferred from the documented rule, not yet observed." with the observation, date and CLI version, citing the 2.1.270 debug-log "Keeping" lines above as the traversal evidence; add the settings.json key-reorder qualifier to the "byte-identical" registry claim. If the tree survived while melodic-software markers past 14 days were swept, state that the sweep does not cover removed marketplaces and decide on an upstream report.
4. One worktree from origin/main after git fetch, one PR (claude-ops plugin bump plus CHANGELOG top-insert), fresh-context verifier, merge, comment here with the result, close this issue.

[kyle-sexton]

The operator-gated follow-up list that lived only in the wiped host's handoffs is now tracked in #4186.