Let's put this tag back in the [tooling] box

The tooling tag has 82 questions, no tag wiki, and no unified meaning. It appears across wildly different technologies and contexts with nothing linking them together.

Let's run it through the burnination criteria:

1. Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied?

No. "Tooling" is too broad to describe any specific programming problem. A question about configuring VS Code, using JS vs. TS, or debugging a Makefile could all arguably be "about tooling", but the tag adds nothing that the more specific tags don't already provide.

2. Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?

Possibly (especially with the expansion of OBC), but the tag itself provides no guidance. Without a wiki, there is no definition of what "tooling" means in the context of this tag, and in practice it is used inconsistently enough that it functions as a meta tag.

3. Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?

No. Any question legitimately about tooling is already better described by the specific tool in question. It is just a filler.

4. Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

No. It is used interchangeably with build tools, developer toolchains, IDE configuration, compiler infrastructure, etc. with no consistent pattern.

The tooling-recommendation tag

Stack Overflow recently introduced/expanded the Opinion-Based Content (OBC) framework, which includes a dedicated/special tooling-recommendation tag. That tag has a "specific" meaning: it signals that a question is a tool recommendation request and places it into the OBC workflow accordingly.

The existence of tooling alongside tooling-recommendation creates confusion; users reaching for the latter may apply the former instead, bypassing the OBC framework.

I propose we burninate tooling. With only 82 questions, the cleanup is manageable, and any (salvageable) question currently carrying the tag is better served by its existing specific tags or, where appropriate, tooling-recommendation.