Observations are append-only. “Series total” counts every generation ever ingested; “active” is the current one. A retired series’ rows stay in the log forever — that is the audit trail, not a leak.
A partial series comes from a table whose labels still collide, so a label-based lookup can land on an arbitrary first-occurrence value. The numbers are stored and cell-anchored — only the labelling is degraded. Partial series are excluded from the hub bundle and from default responses.
This reads the exported bundle manifest committed with the platform, so you can check what the hub map would receive without running the exporter.