Description

Aligning outliers in constants/time with namespace majority patterns (random namespace pick, seed 20260501).

Namespace summary

• Target: @stdlib/constants/time
• Members analyzed: 15 (all non-autogenerated)
• Features extracted: file tree, package.json shape, README sections, manifest.json shape, test/benchmark/example file naming, README and docs/repl.txt "Notes" prose
• Features with clear majority (≥75% conformance): file tree (100%), package.json top-level keys (100%), README H2 sections Usage/Notes/Examples (100%), test file layout (100%), example file layout (100%), and the long-form "Notes" wording in README.md/docs/repl.txt (80%, 12/15)
• Features without clear majority (excluded from drift detection): docs/repl.txt "See Also" auto-population (variable, manually populated downstream), keyword arrays under package.json.keywords (varies by unit; no shared majority pattern), and the optional tex derivation block in lib/index.js (10/15, below threshold and tracks whether the constant has a non-trivial derivation)

Function-shape semantic features (publicSignature, validationPrologue, errorConstruction, jsdocShape) are inapplicable here — every member exports a single integer constant, so per-package semantic-extraction agents were skipped and the analysis is structural-only. This is documented in the local report.

Outlier corrections

@stdlib/constants/time/milliseconds-in-minute

@stdlib/constants/time/milliseconds-in-minute: normalizes "Notes" prose in README.md and docs/repl.txt to the long variant ("inaccuracies due to daylight savings conventions, crossing timezones, or other complications with time and dates"), matching 12/15 (80%) of constants/time/* siblings.

@stdlib/constants/time/milliseconds-in-second

@stdlib/constants/time/milliseconds-in-second: normalizes "Notes" prose in README.md and docs/repl.txt to the long variant ("inaccuracies due to daylight savings conventions, crossing timezones, or other complications with time and dates"), matching 80% of constants/time/* siblings.

@stdlib/constants/time/seconds-in-minute

@stdlib/constants/time/seconds-in-minute: normalizes the "Notes" prose in README.md and docs/repl.txt to the long variant ("inaccuracies due to daylight savings conventions, crossing timezones, or other complications with time and dates"), matching 80% of constants/time/* siblings.

Validation

Three independent validation agents reviewed each outlier before any patch was applied:

1. Semantic-review (Opus): for each outlier, compared lib/index.js and surrounding docs against majority siblings. Result for all three outliers: confirmed-drift. Sub-minute units like seconds-in-hour and minutes-in-hour are equally DST-irrelevant yet still use the long note, so the short-form wording does not track a deliberate semantic boundary.
2. Cross-reference (Opus): verified test/test.js files assert numeric equality only and do not depend on the Notes wording. Confirmed the short-form wording also appears in lib/node_modules/@stdlib/repl/help/data/data.{csv,json}, but those are downstream artifacts generated from each package's docs/repl.txt by repl/help/scripts/build.js. No AUTOGENERATED markers in any of the six edited files. Result for all three outliers: safe-to-fix.
3. Structural-review (Sonnet): confirmed the long-form note is byte-identical across all 12 majority packages and that applying it to the three outliers introduces no factual inaccuracy. Result for all three outliers: confirmed-drift.

Deliberately excluded

• README "See Also" / <section class="related"> blocks — these are auto-populated downstream; drift is upstream and out of scope for this routine.
• Keyword arrays under package.json.keywords — no shared majority pattern (each unit has its own abbreviation triplet, e.g. seconds/secs/sec, while milliseconds/ms only ships two variants).
• tex derivation block in lib/index.js — present in 10/15 (67%, below threshold) and tracks whether the constant has a non-trivial multiplicative derivation; absence in leaf constants like hours-in-day or months-in-year is intentional.

Related Issues

None.

Questions

None.

Other

• Random seed: 20260501 (deterministic from today's date for reproducibility).
• Branch: philipp/drift-constants-time-2026-05-01.
• Per-package commits keep the audit trail readable per-outlier rather than per-feature.
• Downstream repl/help/data/{data.csv,data.json} will pick up the corrected wording the next time repl/help/scripts/build.js runs; not regenerated in this PR to keep the diff focused.
• Full local report (member list, feature distributions, dropped findings) saved at ~/drift-reports/drift-constants-time-2026-05-01.md.

Checklist

• Read, understood, and followed the contributing guidelines.

AI Assistance

• Yes
• No

If you answered "yes" above, how did you use AI assistance?

• Code generation (e.g., when writing an implementation or fixing a bug)
• Test/benchmark generation
• Documentation (including examples)
• Research and understanding

Disclosure

This PR was authored by Claude Code running the cross-package API drift detection routine: a structural feature scan over the 15 constants/time packages, three independent validation agents (semantic-review, cross-reference, structural-review) per outlier, and a final per-package PR-body refinement pass. Every patch is a textual normalization of the "Notes" wording to the namespace majority; no code, signatures, or test expectations were changed. A human will audit before promoting from draft.

@stdlib-js/reviewers

Generated by Claude Code