Status: OUT
The GoF's recommended starter patterns (Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Adapter, Composite, Decorator, Observer, Strategy, Template Method) span the essential building blocks of the composition paradigm: creational infrastructure (Factory Method, Abstract Factory), the composition-vs-inheritance boundary (Decorator, Template Method), recursive structures (Composite), and behavioral decoupling (Observer, Strategy) — suggesting the starter set is not arbitrary but traces the minimum viable path through the composition-centric design paradigm.
Starter patterns are non-arbitrary only if they cover the paradigm essentials; the catalog's incompleteness qualifies this
Depends on (SL): gof-recommended-starter-patterns, composition-paradigm-convergent-and-scalable-with-bounded-exception