Defer clone traversal review to future work

docs/roadmap/future.md

@@ -83,3 +83,36 @@ evidence are preserved in Git history at `8e91a2b` under `docs/roadmap/`.
   across loads without introducing aliasing?
 - What cache lifetime and concurrency design would make schema reuse worthwhile
   without excessive retained memory?
+
+## 4. Clone traversal review
+
+Status: deferred. Review typed configuration cloning after the projection and
+schema consolidation work, when the resulting structure can inform the review.
+This is future maintenance work, not a prerequisite for completing consolidation.
+
+The complexity audit identified `valueOperation.clone` in
+[clone.go](../../internal/engine/clone.go) as a candidate for cleanup. Much of its
+size is straightforward type dispatch. Focused handlers may clarify allocation,
+recursive copying, cycle tracking, secret-state handling, or text-codec
+reconstruction, but extraction may also add indirection without making the code
+easier to understand.
+
+When this work is taken up, assess the traversal and record whether changes are
+worthwhile; a conclusion that no refactor is needed is valid. Make focused
+changes only where the maintenance benefit justifies the code movement. Keep
+cloning's typed-copy semantics distinct from projection's document-building
+semantics. Preserve detached values, nil/empty distinctions, physical inline
+fields, cycle/depth checks, and unresolved versus validated secret handling.
+Reuse existing ownership, codec, secret, and traversal tests, adding coverage for
+consequential gaps. No performance improvement is assumed.
+
+### Questions to resolve before implementation
+
+- After projection and schema consolidation, which clone branches still mix
+  responsibilities enough to benefit from extraction?
+- Would a proposed helper keep allocation, recursive copying, and cycle cleanup
+  easier to follow together, or merely move a short loop out of sight?
+- Are any small shared operations semantically identical across traversals, or
+  would sharing require special cases that obscure their different purposes?
+- Which ownership or special-value risks, if any, lack sufficient existing test
+  coverage for the proposed changes?