Shutdown: when the request stops being answered
Shutdown is the moment requests stop being answered. It is the event a production actually has to plan around, and it is routinely confused with two other things: a deprecation, which is a recommendation, and a model leaving a menu, which is a change to a page. As of 2026-09-22.
| The event | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Deprecation | A recommendation changes; the model still answers |
| Menu removal | A page stops listing it; access may continue |
| Shutdown | Requests stop being answered |
| End-of-life | Shutdown, plus removal from wherever it was served |
Inclusion rule. Distinctions drawn from how the notices in this register actually use the words. No vendor here defines them. Order. From the mildest event to the most final.
1Only one of the three stops work
A deprecated model keeps producing output. A model removed from a menu may still answer for callers who name it directly. A shutdown is the only one of the three that ends a production's ability to generate.
Conflating them costs in both directions. Panicking at a deprecation wastes a migration; ignoring a shutdown date leaves a season unfinished.
2What a shutdown looks like from outside
One platform in this register names the exact response after its date, which lets software tell a retirement apart from a transient fault. Everywhere else the first evidence is a failed request with no explanation attached.
That makes an automated check possible on one entry and impossible on the rest. A production on any other entry learns about a shutdown from its own output stopping.
3A shutdown does not reach every kind of material
Where output was returned per call, the files are wherever the customer put them and a shutdown only removes the ability to make more. Where a product kept a library, a shutdown can reach the library too.
The one documented case in this register did exactly that: material deleted after a final export window. Which is why the same word means two very different losses depending on the product.
A definition rather than a dated entry: no line above is a vendor statement. Where this word turns up in a real notice, the wording and the date are on the stored work column. Nearby terms: End-of-life, Legacy period, Sunset.