Assembly leads must remove a stale custom tag property from instanced curb components before publishing a corridor package. What is the sound approach?

Assembly leads removing a stale custom tag property from instanced curb components must use proper overs or careful deinstance patterns at the assembly stage. Instancing constrains which opinions can live on instanceProxies; arbitrary property deletion often cannot be expressed safely on the proxy alone. At assembly time, staff either author a removal/override in a valid non-instance-breaking way (where supported), or selectively deinstance the curb instances that must lose the tag, apply the cleanup, and reinstance if policy allows. The goal is a publishable corridor package without stale metadata and without hex-editing binaries or deleting shared curb prototypes.

Editing the tag on a random weaker payload and hoping composition drops it is nondeterministic and misunderstands strength/arc behavior. Deleting the curb prototype file removes the asset for everyone and is not a property cleanup. Flattening the corridor and hand-editing binary USDC with a hex editor is unsafe, non-reviewable, and outside professional OpenUSD practice—especially for municipal publish pipelines.

Exam caveat: property removal on instances is a classic trap. Know that many instanceProxies cannot carry arbitrary overs; assembly-stage patterns and selective deinstancing are the legitimate tools. Never treat flatten+binary edit as an answer on NCP-style exams.

Operational check: after cleanup, compose the corridor package, confirm the stale tag is gone from the published curbs, confirm unrelated curb attributes remain, verify instancing is restored or intentionally documented where deinstanced, and run the package validator before city publish.