Agent Action Stack v0.3.0

The first tagged release since 0.2.0. package.json carried 0.2.1 to 0.2.5
during this cycle without tags or changelog sections; those changes are
included here.

Added

• Since 0.2.0, before this changelog existed: same-case review
  (--prove rail), which verifies the act stage's rail bundle with the rail's
  own verifier and records a MandateBound review of the same bytes (#20);
  portable aas export and offline aas replay (#27); aas runs and
  aas prune (#32); aas cases and aas compare (#35); aas inspect,
  aas verify, and aas latest for saved cases, and --root for an
  alternate case store (#40, #41); the inventory allocation domain,
  --domain inventory (#36); and Python 3.11+ interpreter selection with
  AAS_PYTHON (#16).
• Since 0.2.0, the local GUI grew into a case workbench: same-case review,
  imported-case replay, guided scenarios, paged and searchable case history,
  comparison, and saved-case inspection, verification, and Markdown review
  downloads (#26, #34, #35, #39, #40). The integrator examples
  review-handoff (#28) and connector-conformance (#37) and the Playwright
  real-browser tests (#34) arrived in the same period.
• aas --version (also aas version, with --json) prints the orchestrator
  version from package.json. New runs record it as stack_version in
  report.json and manifest.json; aas cases --json, aas inspect, and
  the Markdown case review show it ("Orchestrator version"); and the GUI's
  GET /api/health returns it as version. The field is additive within the
  agent-action-stack.run/v1 schema: cases saved before it was added load
  and verify unchanged and report it as unavailable. It is informational and
  is not one of the fields aas compare compares.
• .github/workflows/release.yml publishes a GitHub Release when a vX.Y.Z
  tag is pushed. It re-runs npm run check and the integration proof on the
  tagged commit, requires the tag to match package.json, the lock, and this
  changelog, and uses the version's changelog section as the release notes.
  Only that job can write, and only to create the release; ci.yml stays
  read-only. package.json is now "private": true: the package works from a
  checkout, not as an installed dependency (it clones into deps/ beside
  itself), so npm publish now refuses it. npm link and the aas bin are
  unaffected.
• npm run check:version (scripts/check-version.mjs), part of
  npm run check and CI's test job. It fails when package-lock.json, this
  changelog, the docs/release-readiness.md pin list, or a --tag disagree
  with the package.json version, and --notes extracts one release's
  section. It found and this change repairs two drifts: the lock still said
  0.2.0 after five patch bumps, and [Unreleased] carried three separate
  ### Changed headings and a compare/main...HEAD link that compared
  nothing. CONTRIBUTING.md now describes the versioning and changelog
  rules.
• CONTRIBUTING.md describing cross-repo coordination and the
  stack-lock.json policy.
• CHANGELOG.md (this file).
• Playwright setup note in the Quick start section of README.md.

Changed

• BREAKING: requires Node.js 22.12.0 or newer (was 20 in 0.2.0); see #18.
  Bootstrap, aas demo, aas replay, aas verify, and GUI runs refuse an
  older runtime before any side effect. Python stays at 3.11 or newer.
• The three component pins were refreshed to reviewed revisions, with a
  pinned legacy replay fixture (fixtures/legacy-rail-review.json) and a
  component compatibility test in the integration proof (9449bd3, #87). The
  current pins are in stack-lock.json and docs/release-readiness.md.
• The pins then moved to the component releases of 2026-10-09, each at its
  release merge commit: Constitutional Agent Testbench 0.6.0 (ed46f0c),
  Consequence Rail 0.3.0 (78d6f8a), and MandateBound 2.0.0 (32d5256). No
  entrypoint, install, or build hook changed, and the orchestrator needed no
  code change: MandateBound 2.0.0's breaking changes are in commands and APIs
  the stack does not call, and its simulate and review behave as before.
  Cases saved under the previous pins still replay and verify. The component
  compatibility test now also replays
  fixtures/previous-pins-inventory-review.json, an inventory case saved under
  the previous pins, against the new Rail verification checks.
• npm run check now runs the unit suite and a syntax gate,
  npm run check:syntax, which parses every module git ls-files reports
  with node --check. CI's test job runs the same gate in place of a
  hand-written list of nine files, which had already drifted once. A new
  .gitattributes pins LF line endings, so a Windows checkout no longer
  turns every tracked file into a CRLF modification.
• CI now tests the documented Python 3.11 floor: the integration matrix adds
  a fifth leg on Ubuntu with Node.js 22.12.0 and Python 3.11, next to the four
  Python 3.13 legs. The pinned workflow actions move to their current
  releases (checkout v7.0.1, setup-node v7.0.0, setup-python v7.0.0), still
  pinned by commit SHA, and .github/dependabot.yml proposes weekly grouped
  updates for GitHub Actions and npm. A test fails if any workflow step uses
  an action without a full commit SHA and version comment. The browser job's
  install step no longer claims a cache it does not have.
• aas help now documents the whole CLI surface. The usage block listed
  neither aas runs nor aas prune although both are dispatched, the command
  list omitted help, and the option reference omitted nine accepted flags:
  --out, --overwrite, --before, --limit, --outcome, --search,
  --keep, --dry-run, and --markdown.
• aas cases --search no longer accepts a value that begins with -.
  aas cases --search --json used to consume --json as the search term and
  exit 0 with an unfiltered listing, so a mistyped or reordered flag silently
  changed the result set. It now reports a missing value and exits 2, matching
  every other value-taking option in the CLI. The aas cases usage message
  also lists the --domain, --outcome, and --search filters it accepts.
• loadComponentLock now rejects an install or build value other than the
  supported tokens (npm-ci, npm-run-build). Those fields are dispatched by
  exact string match, so an unrecognised value was skipped silently and
  npm run bootstrap still reported success for a component that had never
  been installed or built. The shipped stack-lock.json is unchanged.
• npm run gui:smoke now requests /api/health and the workbench page over
  loopback HTTP and asserts the response status, the text/html content type,
  the content security policy header, and the presence of every embedded page
  helper. It previously started the server, closed it, and asserted nothing, so
  it passed even when the page renderer or a route was broken. The rendered
  helper list is now a single PAGE_HELPERS constant shared by renderPage
  and the smoke check.
• The connector conformance example now runs rules 2 to 6 on both synthetic
  connectors and measures the effect itself: active refunds bound to the
  action, and inventory on hand against the connector's baseline. It used to
  touch the refund connector only for capability advertisement and checked
  only call counts and equal return values, so it could not see a second
  effect or an incomplete reversal. The refund remedy check covers the
  duplicate fault (only the duplicate is voided, the primary stays active)
  and a clean refund (no_change).
• Documentation now matches the code. aas help and the export and prune
  usage errors list the --root option both commands accept, the --root
  reference names every command that takes it, and the flow line says
  consequence-rail demo <domain> rather than always refund.
  docs/stack-lock.md now says a lock mismatch stops the run before any
  stage and writes no bundle; it claimed the mismatch was recorded in the
  manifest. The examples README uses the direct node invocation CI uses and
  says the conformance example drives rail modules in-process. The pull
  request template drops issue-form front matter that rendered as text, and
  its checklist now follows CONTRIBUTING.md instead of forbidding the
  changelog and CI edits this repository requires.

Fixed

• aas, aas-gui, and bootstrap now run when launched through a link: an
  npm bin symlink, npm link, a macOS /tmp checkout, or a Windows junction.
  The entrypoint guard compared the realpathed module URL with the unresolved
  process.argv[1], so a linked launch exited 0 without doing anything, and
  npm run gui:smoke through a link reported success without checking. The
  six scripts with a #!/usr/bin/env node line are now tracked as
  executable, so ./bin/aas.mjs runs on a POSIX checkout.
• aas demo validates its options before it checks the runtime. With a broken
  AAS_PYTHON, a usage error such as aas demo --bogus exited 1 with the
  interpreter message, after up to seven interpreter probes, instead of the
  documented exit 2. parseDemoOptions now runs first, and runDemo uses
  the same parser, so the messages are unchanged.
• aas export, verify, inspect, and latest now report a missing saved
  case as Saved case not found: <run-id>, and a missing or unreadable file
  inside a case by its case-relative name. They printed the raw ENOENT
  error, including the absolute local path. The error code stays ENOENT,
  so the GUI's 404 responses are unchanged.
• After an act-stage error, report.json now records prove as skipped with
  reason act_error, matching manifest.json. The report kept its initial
  not_reached, so the GUI summary and the saved-case review disagreed about
  the same run. The GUI summary also labels the act_failed skip reason
  ("act failed") instead of printing the r...