Not to burst your bubble, but :nothing action seems to apply only to 'runnable' resources, like services or executables, and not available for file or template resources.

http://docs.opscode.com/resource_template.html

And even if it was, I think that code was not speaking its intention, and was allowing to do other crazy things like 'delete' or 'touch' actions that are meaningless in this scenario.

Nevertheless, I like the idea about moving this 'chefless' flag from file system to node attributes. It is definitely more flexible and more 'searchable'. Only benefit of file based approach is its obviousness - in the WTF moment when one wonders why some particular config file is NOT being updated, that file there is a silent blunt remainder, in a way that node attribute data is not - one has to go and reach for it. Still, node data has some elegance to it, will implement it soon unless you change your mind :)