0.6.0

• Breaking: the suite's state no longer lives in a committed docs/refactoring/ folder. Your create-modes (Ticket-create-mode, MR-create-mode) and the pointer to the bookkeeping now sit in .scratch/refactor/config.md, and by default the bookkeeping itself in .scratch/refactor/bookkeeping.md — files the suite writes but never commits, branches or opens a merge request for (whether they go into Git, and how they reach another machine, is up to you). Focus areas and refactoring goal are now two lines you add to AGENTS.md. A create-mode the config doesn't state reads as the safe value (ask-each-time, human-opens), and candidate merge requests are no longer opened as drafts. An existing project runs the onboarding again: it moves the state from docs/refactoring/ into the new layout and, after you confirm, removes the old files. The Housekeeping checklist stays at docs/refactoring/housekeeping-template.md.
• The suite now works with any issue tracker that docs/agents/issue-tracker.md describes, not only GitHub, GitLab and local Markdown files. Skills read a handful of named operations from a new ## Refactoring operations section in that file instead of deciding by the tracker's name, and tickets and merge requests may live in different systems (for example Redmine tickets with GitLab merge requests). Onboarding offers a tracker the file already describes as its own answer, lets you describe another one in the interview, and no longer falls back to local files silently. A project onboarded earlier needs the new section: /continuous-refactoring stops with a message until the onboarding has been run again, which adds it. The suite no longer prescribes Closes #<n> itself — the GitHub and GitLab templates carry it.
• New: remote bookkeeping. Instead of local files, the bookkeeping can live in a tracker issue or anywhere else your project describes, and any machine with access to it picks the state up without a commit. The suite fetches the bookkeeping before a pass and stores it after every write; where it lives and how that is done is written in your project, as a Bookkeeping entry under ## Refactoring operations in docs/agents/issue-tracker.md. The GitHub and GitLab templates bring that entry: an issue whose body is the bookkeeping, with learned rejections as comments on it. Onboarding offers to create such an issue, to adopt an existing one, or "as this project describes it", for which it proposes a description from your project's own files. The last write wins; bookkeeping that can't be fetched stops the pass and is never replaced on its own.
• A Safety Net or Guardrails pass no longer picks up structural candidates: an issue labelled refactor:candidate that isn't a tooling-tree node's is now worked only in an Investigation pass, and the closing report says how many are waiting. Candidates you label refactor:priority are still taken by any pass.
• The bookkeeping document's top-level Pending candidates field is gone: every candidate in flight is now tracked in its own Track's Open list. ## Investigation gains an Open field for that, the same shape Safety Net's and Guardrails' already use, holding one entry per in-flight candidate of its own (structural, PHPStan baseline-shrink, or externally-labeled) — up to two, as the suite-wide two-merge-request cap allows. refactor-design appends the entry, refactor-learn removes only the one for the candidate that resolves, and refactor-design writes no bookkeeping for a tooling-tree node. refactor-scan resumes from the selected Track's Open alone, so an Investigation candidate is resumed only during an Investigation pass, never mid a Safety Net or Guardrails one. An existing document that still carries Pending candidates needs no change — the line is ignored. One edge changes: on a tracker without native labels, a hand-filed Tooling tree: <Name> issue interrupted between design and implementation is ranked again on the next pass instead of being resumed unconditionally.
• A flagged candidate (needs-info) now self-confirms when a human's newest comment on the issue plainly agrees with the stated default: the suite swaps the labels itself instead of waiting for you to also flip needs-info/ready-for-agent by hand. A comment proposing something else, or raising a further question, still leaves it flagged — the suite nudges once instead of skipping silently forever, but never applies an alternative on its own.
• refactor-prioritize's "a proposable tooling-tree node is a strong default recommendation" now applies only when every proposal in the pool is itself a tooling-tree node. The moment an issue-backed candidate (structural, PHPStan baseline-shrink, or externally-labeled) is ranked alongside a gate like structural-scan, no default applies to either side — both compete purely on Heat, Leverage, Tooling pressure, and Risk. Previously the default let a permanently-or-long-proposable gate out-rank an already-filed candidate indefinitely, regardless of the candidate's real merit.
• The one-time exception in Track selection is gone: once the Safety Net is in place, no Track gets a forced turn any more. The scheduler goes straight to its ordinary order — Guardrails' first scan, Housekeeping's first cycle, Guardrails' backlog, then Investigation — and the Safety Net pass that finishes the foundation tells you that Guardrails, Housekeeping and Investigation can now each be run directly by naming the Track (e.g. /continuous-refactoring investigation). An Investigation candidate already in flight no longer takes passes away from a due Housekeeping or a workable Guardrails node.
• A Safety Net or Guardrails scan now hands its own fulfilment judgement to the tooling-tree script and records the script's complete ordered list — blocked nodes included — as the Track's Open, instead of reading a state the script no longer detects. Fixed alongside: a target whose bookkeeping.md had a ## Safety Net section but no ## Guardrails section yet was read as having every Guardrails node already in place; a missing Track section now means that Track never ran. A seed file the script cannot read now stops it with an error instead of being silently replaced by the bookkeeping state.