What seasoning physically is
Unglazed stoneware has an open surface. Tea passing through it leaves a trace of oil and aromatic compounds in that surface, and some of that material comes back out into later infusions. That is the entire mechanism, and it is not in dispute. What follows from it is also not in dispute: a pot that has drunk a great deal of ripe pu-erh carries that in its surface, so brewing a delicate green tea in it afterwards puts the two in contact. This is why unglazed pots are conventionally kept to one tea or one category, and the rule follows from the physics rather than from etiquette.
What nobody can tell you
How much difference a seasoned pot makes to a cup, compared with the same tea from an unseasoned pot of the same clay, thickness and shape, is not something TeaHQ has found a controlled comparison for. The honest description is that the effect accumulates over years, that it cannot be separated in casual use from the pot’s heat behaviour or from the drinker’s expectations, and that the confident numbers and timelines circulating in the trade — so many sessions to season a pot, such and such an improvement — are practitioner convention rather than measurement. That is not an argument against seasoning. It is an argument against believing anyone who tells you exactly what it will do.
The rituals, and which of them are load-bearing
Boiling a new pot in water to clear kiln dust and loose clay is sensible and is the one preparation with an obvious purpose. Rinsing a pot with the first infusion of the tea it will be used for is a reasonable way to begin. Pouring tea over the outside so it develops a sheen is decorative and harmless. Boiling a pot in tea, in sugarcane, in tofu or in milk are all recommended somewhere; the first is at worst a fast start on the same process, and the others introduce material into a porous vessel that will stay there, which is a poor idea whatever it is claimed to remove.
The dedication decision, made properly
Dedicating a pot means giving up flexibility, so the question to answer first is whether there is a tea you drink often enough for that trade to be worth anything. Someone who drinks one shou pu-erh most mornings has a clear case. Someone still working through a shelf of samples does not, and should brew in porcelain until they do. It is also perfectly reasonable to dedicate a pot to a category rather than a single tea — roasted oolong, or aged sheng — which is what most owners actually do and which keeps the pot useful.
How a seasoned pot is ruined
Detergent, which the clay takes up and returns for a long time afterwards. Storing it wet and closed, which grows mould in the surface that seasoning built. Switching it to a strongly scented tea, which overwrites everything. And scrubbing the interior, which removes the surface rather than cleaning it. None of these is reversible in any satisfying way — a spoiled pot can be boiled out and rested for months and will usually still carry something.