The excluded-plugin setting that Playwright ignored — fixing browser-mode updates and false residual warnings

The symptom

In browser-mode maintenance (Playwright, no SSH), plugins marked as "excluded from update checks" were still being updated. After the run, a "plugin updates remaining" WARNING email arrived every time.

The excluded plugins were intentionally left behind, but the residual check treated them as unfinished updates and fired a warning — a two-part problem: wrong behavior and a misleading alert.

SSH path vs. Playwright path

On SSH-capable sites, WP-CLI's --skip-plugins flag carries the ignored_plugins list into the update command. That path already excluded them correctly.