staleness-uses-full-sha256
IN premise
Staleness detection compares full 64-character SHA-256 hex digests via exact string equality, not truncated prefixes or fuzzy comparison.
Summary
The system checks whether cached content is still fresh by comparing complete SHA-256 hashes character by character. This means there is zero tolerance for partial matches or approximation — if even one character differs in the 64-character hash, the content is considered stale and will be regenerated.
Dependents
These beliefs depend on this one:
- source-tracking-is-collision-resistant-and-safe — Source integrity tracking uses full 64-character SHA-256 digests with exact string comparison for collision resistance, and backfills hashes additively without overwriting existing values — ensuring high-fidelity drift detection with no accidental data loss
Details
| Source | entries/2026/04/29/reasons_lib-check_stale.md |