diff --git a/src/servers/plugins/release.ts b/src/servers/plugins/release.ts
index 40a2fe9c..3dc90259 100644
--- a/src/servers/plugins/release.ts
+++ b/src/servers/plugins/release.ts
@@ -73,7 +73,18 @@ export type ReleaseState = {
  * Failure is silence. A checkout with no remote, an unreachable host, a repository that has moved — none
  * of those should surface as anything, because the list still has a true answer without them.
  */
-const REFRESH_MS = 10 * 60 * 1000;
+/*
+  Two minutes, and the number is chosen for how releases are actually watched.
+
+  It was ten. The way this gets used is: ship a plugin, open the page, look for the badge — and ten
+  minutes of that is indistinguishable from the feature not working. A release tagged at 12:42 was
+  invisible at 12:45 because the last fetch happened at 12:37, which is correct behaviour and no comfort.
+
+  The cost is bounded by the page being open: nothing fetches when nobody is looking, and the fetches are
+  chained, so the worst case is one small round trip per plugin every two minutes while somebody watches
+  the plugins screen.
+*/
+const REFRESH_MS = 2 * 60 * 1000;
 const fetchedAt = new Map<string, number>();
 let queue: Promise<unknown> = Promise.resolve();