v0.2.0 — machine-checkable handoffs

Agents fail at handoffs, so this release makes every handoff machine-checkable. Grounded in Anthropic's CwC 2026 material (a subagent returning "fairly confident" instead of 0.72 failed an eval; 216k→7.6k tokens by scripting instead of reading) and a full survey of the lane — every steal-worthy idea from GSD, BMAD, gstack, spec-kit, Kiro, Agent OS, superpowers, and Ralph is either in here or documented as rejected.

• Typed story reports — SN.report.md is now a fixed schema the integrator parses, not reads: status, files touched, acceptance command + verbatim output, deviations, contract-change requests, dead ends. Prose demoted to a notes: field.
• Contracts pin exact shapes — every cross-story interface needs the exact return shape, one populated example, and the failure shape. Signatures alone are not a contract.
• Graders + control cases — acceptance checks declare one of 5 grader types; every epic re-runs a previously-passing control case in Wave 2 so a "fix" that regresses something is caught mechanically; repair-loop fixes mint new control cases (capped).
• Bounded repair loops — story self-verify and Wave 2 verify run up to 3 repair rounds against the deterministic check before FAIL; unsatisfiable-check diagnosis (same finding + unchanged files after a redo = the check is wrong) stops the expensive failure spiral.
• DECISIONS.md ledger + ambiguity protocol — settled questions are never re-asked across sessions; ~70–80% of ambiguities auto-resolve via encoded principles; security/paid/irreversible always escalate.
• Readiness dashboard — a mechanical gate table before Wave 1: contracts frozen, every card typed, every check graded, control case declared.
• Design layer (playbooks/design.md) — UI stories carry a data-verify-* DOM contract with headless __verify.runAll(); verifier walks a 10-item falsifiable design audit; every epic's review gate renders a clickable DEMO.html from parsed reports; 2–4 HTML design directions pre-Wave-0.
• The agent tree (playbooks/system.md) — two-level tree, depth by sequencing never nesting; four-part dispatch briefs (inputs by path, never pasted); typed ~1–2K compressed returns; dead_ends survive handoffs; one writer per artifact; STATE.md externalized at every wave boundary.
• Context budget doctrine — orchestrator operates in the front half of its window (≤40–50% fill); predictive check at wave boundaries (fill + next-wave estimate ≥60% → hand off first); workers can return PARTIAL for one orchestrator-dispatched continuation; auto-compact is an emergency brake, never a plan.
• Steal-list v2 — EARS grammar for acceptance checks/KRs, discover-standards step in /aa-import, counter-metrics ("do not optimize") per objective, completion-promise gate on autopilot exit, quality/balanced/budget cost profiles, constitution versioning on PROJECT.md, broad-regression cadence at panel-refresh epics.
• Research fan-out + risk fixtures — multi-epic roadmaps dispatch two parallel smart-tier researchers (domain edges, ecosystem prior art) after the first roadmap draft, producing a RESEARCH.md risk register. Risks ranked fixture become fixture stories pinned before feature stories build on the edge; an ignored fixture row is a BLOCK.
• Panel-pass scaling — the critic-panel gate scales with roadmap size: 1 epic skips, 2–4 get one full pass, 5+ add a spec+execution panel refresh at every third slicing. Bounded, position-derived, no stored state.
• QUICKSTART.md — step-by-step first run, and the README quickstart no longer skips /aa-new-project.

12 of these land below the user surface — no new commands, no new flags. The command surface stays at ~11.