Tag hygiene at scale: the pass nobody loves

The unglamorous maintenance work that keeps a large catalogue navigable — done safely, dry-run first.

Past a few hundred products, tags and collections drift. Aliases pile up, canonical parents go missing, smart-collection rules reference deprecated terms. Nobody enjoys fixing it, so it festers.

Audit, then apply

Maintenance reports cat:/sub: coverage, finds orphaned products, flags imageless items, and surfaces broken smart-collection rules. Every fix previews as a dry-run before anything is written.

Why dry-run is the feature

The lesson: bulk operations are exactly where you don't want surprises. Defaulting to dry-run means you review the proposed change set, then apply with confidence. Safe-by-default beats fast-and-sorry.

Boring work, done safely, is what keeps a big catalogue usable.