ADR-0004: Curated Rules over Plugin Presets

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-03-02

Context

Most shared configs use recommended presets from their respective plugins and override individual rules. This leads to implicit duplicates and conflicts between plugins that cover the same patterns.

Decision

Where plugins provide well-maintained presets with sensible defaults (e.g. eslint.configs.recommended, tseslint.configs.strictTypeChecked, jsdoc flat/recommended-typescript-error, regexp flat/recommended, package-json recommended), we use them as a starting point. On top of these baselines, every additional rule is individually reviewed and hand-picked. We never blindly adopt presets without curation — rules are added, removed, or reconfigured to avoid duplicates and conflicts between plugins.

Consequences

No duplicates or conflicts between plugins (e.g. no-unused-vars vs @typescript-eslint/no-unused-vars)
Full control over severity and options of every single rule
Established presets reduce initial setup effort; curation on top ensures quality
Maintenance overhead on plugin updates: new rules must be manually evaluated
Transparency: the config files document every conscious decision