diff --git a/init.lua b/init.lua
index bca5386..b6278f4 100644
--- a/init.lua
+++ b/init.lua
@@ -8,6 +8,15 @@ local M = {}
 -- (`function M.foo`) — Lua treats them semantically identical.
 -- Returns: { public = ["foo","bar",...], private = ["_baz",...] }
 function M.parse_lua_surface(source_string)
+    -- Strip Lua line-comments (-- to end-of-line) before pattern matching.
+    -- This prevents false-positive matches inside commented-out forward-compat
+    -- stubs (e.g. DEPRECATED-MVP placeholders).
+    -- Block comments (--[[...]]) are not handled; not used in Sporel-lib code.
+    -- Caveat: a literal "--" inside a string would also be stripped; acceptable
+    -- for the lint-tool's purpose (false-negatives in pathological string cases
+    -- are preferable to false-positives on commented stubs).
+    local stripped = string.gsub(source_string, "%-%-[^\n]*", "")
+
     local public  = {}
     local private = {}
     local seen    = {}
@@ -23,12 +32,12 @@ function M.parse_lua_surface(source_string)
     end
 
     -- Form 1: M.foo = function(...)
-    for name in string.gmatch(source_string, "M%.([_%w]+)%s*=%s*function") do
+    for name in string.gmatch(stripped, "M%.([_%w]+)%s*=%s*function") do
         classify(name)
     end
 
     -- Form 2: function M.foo(...)
-    for name in string.gmatch(source_string, "function%s+M%.([_%w]+)") do
+    for name in string.gmatch(stripped, "function%s+M%.([_%w]+)") do
         classify(name)
     end