The open-source template never tells a cycle that a behaviour change dates the documents it did not open #2776

The open-source contribution template tells a cycle to read the codebase, to obey the project's conventions, and — for a translated twin — to edit both copies in one change. It does not tell a cycle that a behaviour change dates the documents the change never opened, so the stale example, step, field list or stated limitation is left for a reviewer to find.

Where this shows up

The rule is general, not one project's habit. A change to a flag's name leaves the README's example output showing the old one; a change to an install path leaves a step in the install guide pointing where the file no longer is; a change to a protocol leaves a field list in the protocol document describing the previous message shape; a change that lifts a limitation leaves the sentence that named it standing, now false. Each of those is a document the diff never touched, and a reviewer who finds one cannot tell from the pull request whether the code or the document is wrong.

The template's §3.1.5 already owns "documents" as a subject twice — a claim written as the project's rule must name the message it rests on, and a document with a translated twin is edited in one change. Both are narrower instances. The missing piece is the general one: the material the change invalidates is found by searching, not by remembering.

What the fix must satisfy

• The rule is stated in §3.1.5, where the subject already lives, in the template's own voice — not appended at the end of the file and not stated twice.
• It names the search, because that is the part a cycle can act on: look for the old behaviour's own spelling — its name, its path, its count, its stated limitation — rather than relying on having noticed the document.
• It says what a stale document is, so the finding is not a matter of taste: a defect the change introduced, not a follow-up for someone else.
• It keeps the second half of the same idea, which is that a number written in prose is a number nothing keeps true: where a document states a count a guard can measure, the document states the guard.
• No placeholder-rooted memory path, no language-policy sentence, and no git mutation is added — the template's existing guards pin those counts, and this change must not move them.