ci(scorecard): drop SCORECARD_TOKEN so Branch-Protection goes inconclusive

[blove]

Summary

Remove repo_token: ${{ secrets.SCORECARD_TOKEN }} from scorecard.yml's "Run analysis" step. Everything else (publish_results: true, permissions, SHA pins) is unchanged.

Why — aggregate mechanics

Passing the PAT unlocked OSSF's Branch-Protection check. But our branch protection is intentionally weak — solo maintainer, no required approvals, enforce_admins: false (needed to keep auto-merge-on-green working) — so it only scores ~4.

OSSF Scorecard's aggregate is a mean that omits inconclusive (-1) checks but includes scored ones. So folding a 4 into our otherwise ~7 checks pulls the average down, not up:

• Observed live: adding the token took the aggregate 6.9 → 6.7.
• Currently 7.2 with Branch-Protection=4 folded in.
• Removing the token reverts Branch-Protection to inconclusive — the default state for any repo that doesn't grant Scorecard a privileged PAT — so it stops counting. Expected aggregate ~7.5.

(Source: ossf/scorecard docs — -1 checks are omitted from the aggregate.)

Notes

• The score change is only verifiable after the next Scorecard publish (the workflow re-runs on push to main + weekly schedule; the public API updates after that run).
• The now-unused SCORECARD_TOKEN repo secret and its PAT can be deleted separately by the owner — nothing references it anymore (grep -rn SCORECARD_TOKEN .github is clean).

Deliberately NOT doing

Strengthening branch protection instead. enforce_admins: true / required approvals would block admin merges and break the auto-merge-on-green flow. The goal is simply to let Branch-Protection return to inconclusive so it stops counting.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Automated approval: this PR received an intelligent (AI) code review. See the review comments on this PR.

[github-actions]

Claude finished @blove's task in 36s —— View job

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PR Review

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This PR looks good. The change is minimal (4-line deletion), the reasoning is solid, and no issues found.

Correctness: The math checks out. Without repo_token, ossf/scorecard-action cannot read branch-protection settings via the GitHub API, so Branch-Protection returns inconclusive (-1). Scorecard omits -1 checks from its aggregate mean, so a low-scoring check that was dragging the average down simply stops counting. The net effect should be the expected score improvement.

Security: Removing a secret reference is strictly safer — the attack surface shrinks. All actions remain SHA-pinned, permissions: read-all + minimal job-level overrides are unchanged, and persist-credentials: false is still in place. No concerns.

One follow-up for the repo owner (not a blocker): The PR description notes that the SCORECARD_TOKEN repo secret and its PAT can now be deleted from repository settings. Worth doing to clean up unused credentials.

This is ready to merge.