large-fork-divergence-means-fork-is-the-package
When a forked repo diverges by 493 files and 35K lines it is no longer a downstream consumer — it IS the package. A blind git merge upstream at that scale will produce hundreds of conflicts and likely destroy fork-specific customisation. The correct upgrade strategy is cherry-pick of individual high-value commits (e.g. web dashboard) as isolated patches, not a bulk rebase. Applied to both Hermes SDK (0.7→0.9) and ResearchClaw (0.3.1→0.4.0) deferral decisions.