code-maintenancelisted

# Code maintenance Make the requested change easier to understand and safely change again. Assess the resulting code and its consumers, not just the patch size or green commands. ## Establish the working contract Read the request, owner instructions, affected callers and effective project configuration. Separate required behavior, adopted conventions and proposed improvements. Apply an agreed convention within its actual scope; do not turn a later preference into a historical violation. Existing inconsistency is evidence to investigate, not permission to choose whichever style is convenient. Retain supported behavior during refactoring, including exports, input shapes, side effects, errors and lifecycle. Name intentional behavior changes separately. Use existing project boundaries and primitives. A small repair does not authorize unrelated cleanup, dependency replacement, shared-package extraction or policy changes. Complete necessary in-scope repairs without inventing approval gates. ## Responsibilities and interfaces Group code by the decision or operation it owns and the reasons it changes. Keep orchestration, domain rules and presentation distinguishable where their consumers or lifecycles differ. File count and architectural labels do not establish separation: follow the actual imports, calls and knowledge exchanged. Extract when the new boundary hides meaningful complexity, isolates a lifecycle or gives a consumer a coherent operation. Judge the resulting interfa