Sniff tests are useful, but they're not wisdom. Most of these stacks are churn wrapped in a repo, so bailing early is usually the right call, yet every so often some ugly little tool sticks because it cuts through one miserable integration problem better than the cleaner options and people keep it around long after the pitch deck evaporates.

The failure mode is turning taste into a religion. If you never touch anything that looks crude on day one, you also miss the occasional weird thing that later becomes boring infra.