An architect cites the deprecated-features registry as authority for a migration deadline in a contract. What is wrong with treating that table as the authoritative source for a date?

The principle — Before a document is used as authority, two questions have to be answered: is it the normative source, and is the field being cited a commitment or a threshold?

Why the key is correct — Both answers point the same way. On authority, the page is unambiguous about its own status: this registry is a derived view kept consistent with the per-feature deprecation notices and changelog entries, which are the normative records. Citing the summary rather than the source is a documentation-hygiene problem in ordinary work and a real one in a contract. On the date, the earliest removal marks when a feature becomes eligible for removal; the actual removal is a Core Maintainer decision taken during release preparation and may happen later. A deadline drawn from that field is drawn from a floor, and the thing it is a floor under has not happened. As a matter of record, no features have been removed under this policy yet.

Why the others are wrong — The registry disclaims normative status in its own text. The date is not published as a commitment. And nothing about a feature appearing in the table implies any feature has yet been removed.

Remember this — Cite the per-feature notice, and read earliest as a floor rather than a date. The general habit is worth more than the specific fact: consolidated tables are written for readers in a hurry, and they usually say somewhere on the page which document a reader in a contract should be quoting instead.

Sources — MCP first-party documentation.