Drop the weekly scheduled-quality workflow; keep waiver expiry as a manual check

The owner's verification-cost standard allows no new CI workflows or
schedules. The 30-day warning already prints in every make verify run,
and make check-waiver-expiry stays runnable by hand. README, CONTRIBUTING,
the Makefile comment and the script docstring now say so.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UpksNcNFYPn6dR3UscZj4Z

Author: claude

.github/workflows/scheduled-quality.yml

@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ make check-generated
 
 ## Quality checks
 
-These scripts enforce the catalog-level rules from `docs/example-quality-rubric.md`. Run them together with `make quality-checks`.
+These scripts enforce the catalog-level rules from `docs/example-quality-rubric.md`. Run them together with `make quality-checks`. CI does not schedule a waiver-expiry run; before a release or once a month, run `make check-waiver-expiry`, which fails while any waiver has 30 days or fewer left.
 
 | Script | What it gates |
 | --- | --- |
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ These scripts enforce the catalog-level rules from `docs/example-quality-rubric.
 | `scripts/check_prose_duplication.py` | No verbatim repeated paragraphs, no cell prose copied from the intro, no duplicate note bullets. |
 | `scripts/check_inline_links.py` | Inline `[text](target)` links in prose resolve to real `/examples` or `/journeys` pages. |
 | `scripts/score_example_criteria.py` | Heuristic criterion scores per example; fails when a curated score exceeds the heuristic by more than the delta bound, so the score registry cannot inflate without the page changing. |
-| `scripts/check_quality_scores.py` | Curated scores meet the 9.0 target / 8.5 hard minimum, waivers carry future expiry dates and are dropped when stale, and the journey-section average stays above its floor. |
+| `scripts/check_quality_scores.py` | Curated scores meet the 9.0 target / 8.5 hard minimum, waivers carry future expiry dates (with a warning in their last 30 days) and are dropped when stale, and the journey-section average stays above its floor. |
 | `scripts/check_no_figure_rationales.py` | No-figure opt-outs carry a reason and an unexpired `review_after` date. |
 | `scripts/check_journey_outcomes.py` | Every journey section declares learner outcomes. |
 | `scripts/audit_example_graph.py --check` | The `see_also` graph has no broken targets, self-links, over-linked pages, or orphaned examples. |

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -92,8 +92,9 @@ score-example-criteria:
 check-quality-scores:
 	$(PY) scripts/check_quality_scores.py
 
-# Scheduled (weekly) gate: fail while a quality waiver has 30 days or fewer
-# left, so the expiry surfaces before it turns every pull request red.
+# Manual gate, not run in CI: fail while a quality waiver has 30 days or fewer
+# left, so an expiry can be caught before it turns every pull request red.
+# `make verify` (CI) already prints a warning inside the same 30-day window.
 check-waiver-expiry:
 	$(PY) scripts/check_quality_scores.py --fail-within-days 30
 

Makefile

@@ -228,6 +228,10 @@ JPEGs under `public/og/` with headless Chrome (set `CHROME_PATH` if needed).
 footgun, notes, program/cell, prose-duplication, inline-link, scoring,
 figure, journey, and example-graph gates.
 
+`make check-waiver-expiry` is a manual check, not run in CI: it fails while
+any quality waiver has 30 days or fewer left. `make quality-checks` (and so CI)
+only prints a warning in that window, then fails once the waiver has expired.
+
 `src/example_sources_data.py` is generated and committed so Cloudflare Workers can load examples in production. Do not edit it by hand.
 
 For a Python version migration, update `python_version` and `docs_base_url` in `src/example_sources/manifest.toml`, then run:

README.md

@@ -10,9 +10,10 @@
 and a waiver whose example has recovered to target is flagged as stale
 so the registry only ever describes live editorial debt.
 
-A waiver that expires within WAIVER_WARNING_DAYS prints a warning. The
-weekly scheduled workflow runs `--fail-within-days 30`, so an approaching
-expiry turns that run red a month before it would fail every pull request.
+A waiver that expires within WAIVER_WARNING_DAYS prints a warning in every
+CI run. `make check-waiver-expiry` (manual, not in CI) runs
+`--fail-within-days 30`, so an approaching expiry fails that command a month
+before it would fail every pull request.
 """
 from __future__ import annotations
 
@@ -84,7 +85,7 @@ def main(argv: list[str] | None = None) -> int:
         "--fail-within-days",
         type=int,
         default=None,
-        help="treat waivers expiring within N days as errors (the scheduled run uses 30)",
+        help="treat waivers expiring within N days as errors (make check-waiver-expiry uses 30)",
     )
     parser.add_argument("--as-of", help="evaluate expiry as of this ISO date instead of today (UTC)")
     args = parser.parse_args(argv)

scripts/check_quality_scores.py

@@ -290,7 +290,7 @@ def test_waiver_expiry_warns_thirty_days_ahead(self):
         self.assertIsNone(mod.expiry_warning(expires, today=datetime.date(2026, 12, 1)))
         self.assertIsNone(mod.expiry_warning("never", today=datetime.date(2026, 11, 1)))
 
-    def test_expiring_waiver_warns_on_prs_and_fails_the_scheduled_run(self):
+    def test_expiring_waiver_warns_on_prs_and_fails_the_expiry_gate(self):
         import datetime
 
         mod = _scripts_import("check_quality_scores")