Which features a build contains was not a decision anybody could express. The
reference feature was spread directly into the route, API, schema, codec and
adapter registries, so shipping without it meant editing five files by hand and
hoping nothing still referred to it — and there was no way at all to take it out
of service on a running deployment. The removability gate proved the editing
worked; nothing made it a choice.
There is now one manifest. `VITE_PRODUCT_FEATURES` narrows it at build time and
`FEATURE_OVERRIDES` in the runtime document takes an installed feature out of
service without a rebuild. Every registry composes from the manifest, and a test
fails if a new one forgets to.
Both inputs are subtractive, and the vocabulary is what enforces it rather than
a check somewhere downstream: the override enum has no `ENABLED`, and a
build-time selection naming something the source tree does not declare is
refused instead of ignored. A configuration document that could name a feature
into existence would be a configuration document choosing which code runs.
Disabling is not just hiding. Withdrawing a route from navigation would leave a
typed deep link that still mounts the feature, so the router refuses it too and
answers with a surface that says the deployment switched it off. The platform
overview now distinguishes the three states an operator actually needs: serving,
switched off, and not in this build.
What this is not: an env var does not shrink the bundle. A static import cannot
be undone by a value, and making the import graph itself depend on a
configuration string is the thing §3.5 exists to prevent — measured, `none`
changes the output by 58 bytes. Physical removal remains FE-GATE-020's job, and
the code comments say so rather than implying otherwise.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
