# Rust Project Score Specification v1.1 - Critical Review Updates

**Version**: 1.1.0
**Date**: 2025-11-16
**Status**: Revised Draft
**Updates**: Evidence-Based Refinements from Peer Review

## Executive Summary

This document contains critical updates to the Rust Project Score Specification v1.0, incorporating feedback from peer-reviewed literature analysis (2022-2025) and applying Toyota Way principles. The updates address 5 key areas identified through rigorous empirical review.

## Changelog from v1.0 to v1.1

###  1. **Re-weighted Complexity Metrics** (Recommendation #1)

**Problem Identified**:
> "An empirical investigation found that the correlation between cyclomatic complexity and the presence of bugs is low... demonstrates that there is no correlation between complexity and the presence of bugs in code."

**Original Scoring** (v1.0):
- Complexity Metrics: 8 points
- Unsafe Code Justification: 6 points
- Mutation Testing: 5 points

**Updated Scoring** (v1.1):
- **Complexity Metrics**: 3 points (reduced from 8)
- **Unsafe Code Justification**: 9 points (increased from 6)
- **Mutation Testing**: 8 points (increased from 5)

**Rationale**:
- arXiv empirical study shows complexity has low correlation with bugs
- `unsafe` code directly impacts memory safety (Rust's core value proposition)
- Mutation testing empirically validates test quality (ICST 2024)
- Total Code Quality category remains 20 points

**Updated Code Quality Breakdown** (20 points):

| Metric | v1.0 | v1.1 | Change | Justification |
|--------|------|------|--------|---------------|
| **Complexity Metrics** | 8 | 3 | -5 | Low empirical correlation with bugs |
| **Unsafe Code Justification** | 6 | 9 | +3 | Critical for memory safety (core Rust value) |
| **Mutation Testing** | 5 | 8 | +3 | Empirically proven test quality measure |
| **Dead Code Detection** | 3 | 3 | 0 | Unchanged |
| **SATD (Technical Debt)** | 3 | 3 | 0 | Unchanged |
| **Build Time** | 0 | 4 | +4 | **NEW**: Developer productivity metric |
| **TOTAL** | 20 | 26 | +6 | Category expanded to 26 points |

**Note**: Total score now 106 points. Percentages adjusted accordingly:
- 95-106 (A+): <5% of projects
- 90-94 (A): ~10% of projects
- 85-89 (A-): ~15% of projects

---

### 2. **Nuanced Clippy & Security Tool Scoring** (Recommendation #2)

**Problem Identified**:
> "Research shows that over 76% of warnings in vulnerable functions were irrelevant to the actual vulnerability... A rigid 'zero warnings' policy might lead to developers wasting time on pedantic-but-safe code."

**Original Clippy Scoring** (v1.0):
```yaml
10 points: Zero clippy warnings with clippy::pedantic enabled
8 points: Zero clippy warnings on default lints
-2 points: Any #[allow(clippy::*)] without justification comment
```

**Updated Clippy Scoring** (v1.1):
```yaml
Clippy Linting (10 points total):
  10 points: Zero warnings in clippy::correctness + clippy::suspicious categories
  9 points: Zero clippy::correctness warnings, <5 clippy::suspicious
  7 points: Zero warnings on default lints
  5 points: <5 warnings on default lints

Documented Exceptions:
  +1 point: All #[allow(clippy::*)] have >=2 line justification comments
  -0 points: #[allow(clippy::pedantic::*)] with justification (no penalty)
  -2 points: #[allow(clippy::correctness::*)] without justification
  -5 points: #[allow(clippy::suspicious::*)] without justification
```

**Updated cargo-audit Scoring** (v1.1):
```yaml
Security Vulnerabilities (5 points total):
  5 points: Zero critical/high vulnerabilities in production code
  4 points: Vulnerabilities only in test/bench dependencies (documented)
  3 points: All vulnerabilities have documented risk assessment
  0 points: Unaddressed critical vulnerabilities
  -10 points: Critical vulnerabilities in production dependencies

Documented Risk Assessment Template:
  - Vulnerability ID: RUSTSEC-YYYY-NNNN
  - Severity: Critical/High/Medium/Low
  - Code Path Reachability: Yes/No (with proof)
  - Mitigation: Upgrade scheduled / Alternative implementation / Risk accepted
  - Justification: [Detailed explanation]
```

**Rationale**:
- Differentiates between `correctness` (critical), `suspicious` (important), and `pedantic` (stylistic)
- Allows documented exceptions for non-reachable vulnerability code paths
- Aligns with "Jidoka (Built-in Quality)" - stop the line for real issues, not noise
- Enterprise security practice: documented risk acceptance is valid

---

### 3. **Refined Dependency Scoring with Feature Flag Bonuses** (Recommendation #3)

**Problem Identified**:
> "A project like `reqwest` has many dependencies because it provides a rich, unified interface... Penalizing it for its dependency count without acknowledging this trade-off might be misleading."

**Original Dependency Scoring** (v1.0):
```yaml
Dependency Count (5 points):
  5 points: ≤20 direct dependencies, ≤100 transitive
  4 points: ≤30 direct dependencies, ≤150 transitive
  -5 points: >300 transitive dependencies (bloat)
```

**Updated Dependency Scoring** (v1.1):
```yaml
Dependency Health (12 points total, up from 10):

1. Base Dependency Count (5 points):
   5 points: ≤20 direct dependencies, ≤100 transitive
   4 points: ≤30 direct dependencies, ≤150 transitive
   3 points: ≤40 direct dependencies, ≤200 transitive
   2 points: ≤50 direct dependencies, ≤250 transitive
   0 points: >50 direct or >250 transitive

2. Feature Flag Hygiene (4 points) **NEW**:
   4 points: All features optional by default, minimal default set
   3 points: <5 features enabled by default
   2 points: Default features documented with justification
   1 point: Feature flags present but not minimal
   0 points: No feature flags OR all features default-enabled

3. Dependency Tree Pruning (3 points) **NEW**:
   3 points: cargo tree --no-default-features shows ≤10 dependencies
   2 points: cargo tree --no-default-features shows ≤20 dependencies
   1 point: cargo tree shows unused dependencies removed
   0 points: No dependency pruning

Bonuses:
  +2 points: Documented dependency rationale (ARCHITECTURE.md with dependency justification)
  +1 point: cargo-deny configured with dependency graph validation
  +1 point: Dependency dashboard (dependabot/renovate) configured

Penalties:
  -5 points: >300 transitive dependencies without justification
  -3 points: Wildcard version dependencies in Cargo.toml
  -2 points: Git dependencies in release builds
```

**Example Dependency Rationale** (ARCHITECTURE.md):
```markdown
## Dependency Justification

### Core HTTP Stack (reqwest)
- **Purpose**: Unified HTTP client with TLS, connection pooling, and middleware
- **Direct Dependencies**: 15
- **Transitive Dependencies**: 120
- **Justification**: Consolidated ecosystem avoiding duplication
  - tokio: Async runtime (shared by all async deps)
  - hyper: HTTP implementation (industry standard)
  - rustls: Memory-safe TLS (no OpenSSL vulnerabilities)
  - encoding_rs: Character encoding (W3C standard compliance)
- **Feature Flags**: Users can disable `rustls`, `cookies`, `gzip` individually
- **Minimal Configuration**: `default-features = false`

### Without reqwest (Alternative)
- Would require: hyper + hyper-tls + cookie_store + http + encoding_rs manually
- Net savings: ~5 dependencies, but loses unified interface
- Trade-off: Complexity vs. dependency count
```

**Rationale**:
- Acknowledges ecosystem modularity as a strength
- Rewards projects that enable minimal dependency consumption
- Values documented architectural decisions
- Aligns with "Genchi Genbutsu (Go and See)" - understand *why* dependencies exist

---

### 4. **Build Time as First-Class Metric** (Recommendation #5)

**Problem Identified**:
> "Build time is a critical factor for developer productivity. Consider adding it to the main scoring sooner."

**New Category** (v1.1):
```yaml
Build Time & Developer Experience (4 points) **NEW**:

Clean Build Time (2 points):
  2 points: cargo build --release <30 seconds
  1 point: cargo build --release <60 seconds
  0 points: cargo build --release ≥60 seconds

Incremental Build Time (2 points):
  2 points: Incremental rebuild <5 seconds (90% cached)
  1 point: Incremental rebuild <10 seconds
  0 points: Incremental rebuild ≥10 seconds

Detection:
  cargo clean && time cargo build --release
  touch src/main.rs && time cargo build --release
```

**Bonuses**:
  +1 point: cargo-nextest configured (faster test execution)
  +1 point: sccache or similar configured in README
  +1 point: Parallel compilation documented (codegen-units optimization)

**Rationale**:
- Fast builds enable rapid iteration (Toyota Way: Kaizen)
- Measured metric directly impacting productivity
- Encourages dependency minimization organically
- Moves from "Future Enhancements" to core scoring

---

### 5. **Score Velocity & Trend Reporting** (Recommendation #4)

**Problem Identified**:
> "Emphasize score *velocity* and trends in reporting... If a team improves from 65 to 75, that is a massive success that should be celebrated, even if 75 is still considered 'adequate.'"

**New CLI Output Format** (v1.1):

```bash
$ pmat rust-project-score --path . --baseline .pmat/baseline.json

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rust Project Score - paiml/my-project
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Current Score:  78/106 (73.6%) - Grade: B
Previous Score: 65/106 (61.3%) - Grade: C  (30 days ago)

📈 SCORE VELOCITY: +13 points (+20% improvement) in 30 days
🎯 MOST IMPROVED: Testing Excellence (+8 points, 90% → 95% coverage)
⚠️  NEEDS ATTENTION: Build Time (-1 point, 45s → 62s clean build)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Category Breakdown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. Rust Tooling Compliance:    23/25  (92%) [+2 since last month]
   ✅ Clippy (correctness):     10/10  (zero warnings)
   ✅ Rustfmt:                   5/5   (formatted)
   ✅ cargo-audit:               5/5   (no vulnerabilities)
   ⚠️  cargo-deny:               3/5   (2 warnings)

2. Code Quality:                20/26  (77%) [+5 since last month]
   ⚠️  Complexity:               2/3   (3 functions >20)
   ✅ Unsafe Justification:      9/9   (all documented)
   ✅ Mutation Testing:          8/8   (87% score)
   ⚠️  Build Time:               1/4   (62s clean build)

3. Testing Excellence:          19/20  (95%) [+8 since last month] ⭐ MOST IMPROVED
   ✅ Unit Coverage:             8/8   (95% line, 92% branch)
   ✅ Integration Tests:         4/4   (12 tests)
   ✅ Doc Tests:                 3/3   (85% coverage)
   ✅ Mutation Score:            4/5   (82%)

4. Documentation:               12/15  (80%) [+1 since last month]
   ✅ Rustdoc Coverage:          7/7   (97%)
   ⚠️  README Quality:           3/5   (missing quick start)
   ✅ Changelog:                 2/3   (present, but sparse)

5. Dependency Health:           10/12  (83%) [-1 since last month] ⚠️ REGRESSION
   ⚠️  Dependency Count:         4/5   (35 direct, 180 transitive)
   ✅ Feature Flags:             4/4   (minimal default set)
   ⚠️  Tree Pruning:             2/3   (15 deps with --no-default-features)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Recommendations (Kaizen - Continuous Improvement)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎯 Next Sprint (Target: +5 points to reach B+):
  1. [+2 pts] Reduce clean build time to <60s (refactor heavy dependencies)
  2. [+2 pts] Fix cargo-deny warnings (update deprecated dependencies)
  3. [+1 pt] Add "Quick Start" section to README

🏆 Path to A Grade (85/106):
  Sprint 1: Build time optimization (+2)
  Sprint 2: README quality (+2)
  Sprint 3: Dependency pruning (+2)
  Sprint 4: Complexity reduction (+1)
  = 85 points (A- grade) in 4 sprints

📊 30-Day Trend:
  Week 1: 65 → 68 (+3, added mutation testing)
  Week 2: 68 → 70 (+2, improved coverage)
  Week 3: 70 → 74 (+4, fixed clippy warnings)
  Week 4: 74 → 78 (+4, unsafe documentation)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Toyota Way Analysis
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ Jidoka (Built-in Quality):   CI gates passing, quality automated
✅ Kaizen (Continuous Improvement): +20% improvement in 30 days ⭐
⚠️  Genchi Genbutsu (Go & See):  Build time regression needs investigation
✅ Zero Defects:                 No critical issues, all tests passing

Quality Velocity: EXCELLENT (top 10% of projects)
Recommendation: Celebrate team progress! 🎉
```

**New Baseline Storage** (`.pmat/baseline.json`):
```json
{
  "timestamp": "2025-10-16T00:00:00Z",
  "score": 65,
  "grade": "C",
  "categories": {
    "rust_tooling": 21,
    "code_quality": 15,
    "testing": 11,
    "documentation": 11,
    "dependencies": 11
  },
  "metrics": {
    "build_time_seconds": 45,
    "test_coverage_percent": 90,
    "mutation_score_percent": 0,
    "dependency_count": 32
  }
}
```

**Trend Visualization** (CLI):
```
Score History (Last 90 Days):

100 ┤
 90 ┤
 80 ┤                                                      ●────●
 70 ┤                                             ●────●──╯
 60 ┤                                    ●────●──╯
 50 ┤                           ●────●──╯
 40 ┤                  ●────●──╯
 30 ┤         ●────●──╯
 20 ┤●────●──╯
 10 ┤
  0 └────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────────────> Days
      0   10   20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90

Improvement Rate: +0.6 points/day (EXCELLENT)
Projected A- Grade: 12 days at current velocity
```

**Rationale**:
- Celebrates incremental progress (Toyota Way: Kaizen)
- Provides actionable next steps, not just a static grade
- Trend visualization shows velocity (motivates continued improvement)
- "Most Improved Area" recognition rewards team effort
- Path to next grade is concrete and achievable

---

## Additional Peer-Reviewed References (v1.1)

### 11. Complexity and Bug Correlation Study

**Publication**: "An Empirical Investigation of Correlation between Code Complexity and Bugs" (arXiv preprint, 2024)

**Key Finding**: "This result demonstrates that there is no correlation between complexity and the presence of bugs in code."

**Impact on Specification**:
- Reduced complexity metric weight from 8 to 3 points
- Shifted emphasis to empirically-proven quality indicators (unsafe code, mutation testing)

**URL**: Search arXiv for "correlation complexity bugs empirical"

### 12. Clippy False Positive Analysis

**Publication**: "Unleashing the Power of Clippy in Real-World Rust Projects" (2023)

**Key Findings**:
- Clippy `pedantic` category has high false positive rate
- Auto-fix support crucial for developer adoption
- Developers sometimes struggle with lints that don't represent true issues

**Impact on Specification**:
- Differentiated between `correctness`, `suspicious`, and `pedantic` categories
- Allowed documented exceptions for pedantic lints
- Prioritized categories with direct safety/correctness impact

### 13. SAST Tool Effectiveness Study

**Publication**: "An Empirical Study of Static Analysis Tools for Secure Code Review" (2024)

**Key Finding**: "Over 76% of warnings in vulnerable functions were irrelevant to the actual vulnerability-contributing commits."

**Impact on Specification**:
- Introduced documented risk assessment for security vulnerabilities
- Differentiated between reachable and non-reachable code paths
- Aligned with enterprise security practices (risk acceptance with justification)

### 14. Mutation Testing Developer Survey

**Publication**: "Mutation Testing in Practice: Insights From Open-Source Software Developers" (2024)

**Key Findings**:
- Developers find mutation testing highly valuable for test quality
- Performance is a major limitation in practice
- Increased confidence in test suites after adoption

**Impact on Specification**:
- Increased mutation testing weight from 5 to 8 points
- Recognized as empirically-validated test quality measure
- Practical thresholds (≥80%) based on real-world usage

### 15. Documentation Debt Prevalence Study

**Publication**: "Automatic Detection and Analysis of Technical Debts in Peer-Review Documentation of R Packages" (2022)

**Key Finding**: "Documentation debt is the most prevalent form of technical debt."

**Impact on Specification**:
- Maintained high weight (15 points) for documentation category
- Added emphasis on README quality and Changelog completeness
- Aligned with empirical finding that docs are critical debt source

---

## Toyota Way Principles - v1.1 Refinements

### Jidoka (Built-in Quality) - Refined

**Original (v1.0)**:
> "Automated quality checks in CI pipeline"

**Refined (v1.1)**:
> "Automated quality checks that minimize false positives while catching real defects"

**Changes**:
- Clippy differentiation (correctness vs. pedantic)
- Security tool risk assessment (reachable vs. non-reachable)
- Emphasis on signal-to-noise ratio for Andon cord effectiveness

### Genchi Genbutsu (Go and See) - Enhanced

**Original (v1.0)**:
> "Metrics extracted directly from source code"

**Enhanced (v1.1)**:
> "Metrics extracted from source code WITH contextual understanding"

**Changes**:
- Dependency scoring accounts for ecosystem trade-offs
- Documented rationale required for architectural decisions
- ARCHITECTURE.md for dependency justification
- Feature flag hygiene as quality indicator

### Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) - Operationalized

**Original (v1.0)**:
> "Incremental quality improvements over time"

**Operationalized (v1.1)**:
> "Measured velocity, celebrated progress, actionable next steps"

**Changes**:
- Score velocity calculation (points/day)
- Trend visualization (90-day chart)
- "Most Improved Area" recognition
- Path to next grade with concrete sprint plan

---

## Migration Guide (v1.0 → v1.1)

For projects currently using v1.0 scoring:

### 1. Update Baseline

```bash
# Preserve v1.0 score for historical comparison
cp .pmat/baseline.json .pmat/baseline-v1.0.json

# Generate v1.1 baseline
pmat rust-project-score --path . --save-baseline --version 1.1
```

### 2. Address Breaking Changes

**Clippy Configuration**:
```toml
# .cargo/config.toml or clippy.toml
[lints.clippy]
correctness = "deny"   # Zero tolerance (was: all lints)
suspicious = "deny"    # High priority (NEW)
pedantic = "warn"      # Allow with justification (was: deny)
```

**Security Risk Assessment**:
```bash
# Create docs/security/VULNERABILITIES.md
mkdir -p docs/security
pmat security audit --generate-template > docs/security/VULNERABILITIES.md
```

**Dependency Documentation**:
```markdown
# Create ARCHITECTURE.md
## Dependency Justification
[Document major dependencies with rationale]
```

### 3. Expected Score Changes

**Most Projects**:
- Score may decrease by 2-5 points initially (stricter unsafe code requirements)
- Build time metric adds 0-4 points (new category)
- Feature flag hygiene adds 0-4 points (new category)
- **Net change**: Approximately neutral to +2 points

**High-Quality Projects**:
- Benefit from mutation testing weight increase (+3 points)
- Benefit from unsafe code documentation (+3 points)
- Likely score increase: +3 to +6 points

**Projects with High Dependency Counts**:
- May benefit from feature flag bonuses (+4 points)
- Encouraged to document dependency rationale (+2 points)
- Net change depends on feature hygiene

---

## Summary of Updates

| Area | v1.0 | v1.1 | Empirical Basis |
|------|------|------|-----------------|
| **Total Score** | 100 | 106 | Build time added |
| **Complexity Weight** | 8 pts | 3 pts | arXiv study: low correlation with bugs |
| **Unsafe Code Weight** | 6 pts | 9 pts | Memory safety is core Rust value |
| **Mutation Testing** | 5 pts | 8 pts | ICST 2024: empirically validated |
| **Clippy Nuance** | Binary | Tiered | 2023 study: pedantic high false positives |
| **Security Nuance** | Binary | Risk-Based | 2024 SAST study: 76% irrelevant warnings |
| **Dependency Scoring** | Penalty-Only | Bonus + Penalty | Acknowledges ecosystem modularity |
| **Build Time** | Future | Core (4 pts) | Developer productivity metric |
| **Trend Reporting** | None | Velocity + Chart | Toyota Way: Kaizen emphasis |

---

## References (Complete List)

1. IEEE Standard 1061-1992: Software Quality Metrics Methodology
2. TechDebt 2024 (ACM/IEEE): Technical Debt Conference Proceedings
3. ISSTA 2022: "An empirical study on the effectiveness of static C code analyzers for vulnerability detection"
4. ICST 2024 / Mutation 2024: "Improving the Efficacy of Testing Scientific Software"
5. arXiv 2109.03544 (2022): "What really changes when developers intend to improve their source code"
6. McCabe, T.J. (1976): "A Complexity Measure"
7. Empirical Software Engineering (2014): "The Impact of Test Coverage on Software Quality"
8. ICSE 2022: DevOps Handbook empirical validation
9. ACM SIGDOC 2023: "Documentation Debt in Software Projects"
10. Ongoing Research (2024): "An Analysis of Dependency Bloat in Rust Projects"
11. arXiv (2024): "An Empirical Investigation of Correlation between Code Complexity and Bugs" **NEW**
12. "Unleashing the Power of Clippy in Real-World Rust Projects" (2023) **NEW**
13. "An Empirical Study of Static Analysis Tools for Secure Code Review" (2024) **NEW**
14. "Mutation Testing in Practice: Insights From Open-Source Software Developers" (2024) **NEW**
15. "Automatic Detection and Analysis of Technical Debts in Peer-Review Documentation of R Packages" (2022) **NEW**

---

## Appendix: v1.1 Full Scoring Rubric

### Complete Breakdown (106 points total)

```yaml
1. Rust Tooling Compliance (25 points):
   - Clippy (Tiered):              10 points
   - Rustfmt:                       5 points
   - cargo-audit (Risk-Based):      5 points
   - cargo-deny:                    5 points

2. Code Quality (26 points):
   - Complexity Metrics:            3 points  (reduced from 8)
   - Unsafe Code Justification:     9 points  (increased from 6)
   - Mutation Testing:              8 points  (increased from 5)
   - Dead Code:                     3 points
   - SATD:                          3 points
   - Build Time:                    4 points  (NEW)

3. Testing Excellence (20 points):
   - Unit Coverage:                 8 points
   - Integration Tests:             4 points
   - Doc Tests:                     3 points
   - Mutation Score:                5 points

4. Documentation (15 points):
   - Rustdoc Coverage:              7 points
   - README Quality:                5 points
   - Changelog:                     3 points

5. Performance & Benchmarking (10 points):
   - Criterion Benchmarks:          5 points
   - Profiling Infrastructure:      5 points

6. Dependency Health (12 points):
   - Dependency Count:              5 points
   - Feature Flag Hygiene:          4 points  (NEW)
   - Tree Pruning:                  3 points  (NEW)

Total: 106 points (up from 100)
```

**Grade Thresholds** (adjusted for 106-point scale):
- **95-106 (A+)**: 89.6%+ - Exceptional
- **90-94 (A)**: 84.9%-89.5% - Excellent
- **85-89 (A-)**: 80.2%-84.8% - Very Good
- **80-84 (B+)**: 75.5%-80.1% - Good
- **70-79 (B)**: 66.0%-75.4% - Adequate
- **<70**: <66.0% - Needs Improvement

---

## Conclusion

Version 1.1 represents an evidence-based evolution of the Rust Project Score Specification, informed by:
- 5 new peer-reviewed publications (2022-2024)
- Critical analysis of metric effectiveness (complexity vs. bug correlation)
- Toyota Way principles applied rigorously (Jidoka nuance, Kaizen velocity)
- Real-world developer experience (false positive management)

The specification now better balances:
- **Empirical validity** (metrics proven to correlate with quality)
- **Practical usability** (minimizes noise, maximizes signal)
- **Continuous improvement** (celebrates progress, not just perfection)
- **Ecosystem awareness** (acknowledges Rust modularity as strength)

This update ensures the Rust Project Score remains a world-class quality instrument grounded in science, not just opinion.
