Decision: keep, invest in, or remove apps/loopover-miner-extension (opportunity overlay)

[JSONbored]

Problem

apps/loopover-miner-extension ("LoopOver Miner Opportunity") badges GitHub issue pages (github.com/*/*/issues/*) with a ranked opportunity score/tier for repos a contributor is "watching," sourced from a local miner-ui dev server (http://localhost:5174/api/ranked-candidates) via a chrome.alarms-driven 10-minute ambient sync. It never writes to GitHub, and per its own README, "omits itself when no ranked signal is available."

Unlike the maintainer extension, this one has zero promotion anywhere: not linked from the root README, no docs page, no link from apps/loopover-miner-ui or any other UI. Its only documentation is its own package-local README.md, describing a fully DIY workflow ("build it yourself, chrome://extensions -> load unpacked") aimed at contributors running the miner locally in "laptop mode." Distribution is source-only -- scripts/build-miner-extension.mjs zips it into the package's own gitignored dist/, never copied anywhere publicly served.

Despite the near-total lack of discoverability, it gets real, fairly dense ongoing development: 25 commits, live-fetch sync replacing manual paste, storage-quota guards, a toolbar badge, fetch timeouts, and a ~98%-statement test-coverage gate enforced in CI. That effort profile is worth being explicit about when weighing removal -- this isn't abandoned code, it's actively maintained code with (as far as this session can tell) no way for anyone to discover it exists.

Area

apps/loopover-miner-extension/**, scripts/build-miner-extension.mjs, its CI wiring.

Proposal (open questions a decision pass needs to answer -- not yet decided)

• Is "zero promotion" intentional or an oversight? If this was meant to ship to contributors as a real feature, it's missing the promotion the maintainer extension has (README row, docs page, marketing route). If it's intentionally an internal/opt-in power-tool for a small set of "laptop-mode" contributors who'd find it via the miner's own docs/source, that's a coherent reason to keep it deliberately unpromoted rather than evidence it should be cut.
• Real usage: given zero promotion, adoption is plausibly at or near zero almost by construction (no path to discovery without reading source). Still worth confirming rather than assuming -- e.g. any download/build-script invocation telemetry, or asking in whatever contributor channel exists.
• If kept: does it get a real promotion path (linked from packages/loopover-miner's own docs/README, or apps/loopover-miner-ui), or does it stay intentionally DIY-only?
• If removed: the ~584 lines plus its coverage-gate CI step, scripts/build-miner-extension.mjs, and any references in packages/loopover-miner's own docs (unattended-scheduling.md and similar) would need cleanup -- scope that out as a follow-up if this is the decision.

Deliverables

• Clarify whether the lack of promotion is intentional (internal power-tool) or an oversight (feature nobody finished shipping).
• A recorded keep-as-is / promote-properly / deprecate-and-remove decision, with rationale.
• If removal is decided: a follow-up issue scoping the actual removal (out of scope for this issue itself).

Resources

• apps/loopover-miner-extension/manifest.json, background.js, content.js, opportunity-badge.js, toolbar-badge.js, options.js, README.md
• packages/loopover-miner/lib/opportunity-ranker.js -- the local signal source this extension is a companion to
• #4307 / #4308 -- original scaffold issues

Boundaries

• maintainer-only -- a product/priority call, not app-level code contributors should pick up.
• No code changes here. No removal without the decision above being made and recorded first.

[linear-code]

JSO-5366