1.12.0

Added

• RELEASING.md documents the release sequence step by step, with the reason each step sits where it does, after 1.11.0 nearly shipped a stale VERSION file.
• tools/check-release.sh verifies on every invocation that the VERSION file matches the CHANGELOG's top section, and the tag too when one is passed, exiting 1 with a per-failure fix. It needs only bash, grep and sed, so it behaves identically locally and on a runner.
• .github/workflows/release-check.yml, the repo's first CI workflow, runs that script on pushes to main, on pull requests, and on v* tags, plus on demand with a tag argument so the tag path can be exercised without creating a tag. main carries no branch protection, so the check reports a mismatch rather than blocking it.
• tools/check-published.sh verifies the tag is annotated and pushed, the GitHub release is published with a body matching CHANGELOG.md, and the badge carries the right version. Run it by hand as the last release step; it needs gh authenticated and skips its gh-dependent checks visibly otherwise.
• mission-control's VERIFY phase gains a rule that a correction is not done until every place stating the old truth is fixed, not only the one found first.
• mission-control's VERIFY phase gains a rule to verify a mechanism by triggering it for real rather than reimplementing its rules, unless the trigger is destructive, costly, or irreversible.
• test-discipline gains a fifth procedure step requiring a metric from an angle the work did not target: a count against a known total, or an independently drawn sample.
• code-craft's runtime-cost section gains a rule to measure a suspected cost center before launching an optimization effort on it, distinct from fixing one of the four named triggers by reading.