v3.12.6 - The Tray Learns to Project Its Debate

A documentation-and-housekeeping release: the debate protocol learns to describe the Task Tray as a bounded projection surface rather than a raw transcript, while CI and the lazy-enrichment tests are tuned to age gracefully. No runtime or library code changed.

Highlights

• Docs — Task Tray operator dashboard defined (docs/DEBATE_PROTOCOL.md, +91 lines). A new section establishes the Task Tray window as a human/CONDUCTOR control surface over projections of the debate, not a replay of debate_messages. The immutable raw log stays the ledger; the tray presents bounded, drill-back-capable views to turn read cost from O(everything × agents) into O(changes × interested actor).
  • Specifies the required projections: HUMAN_BRIEF, CONDUCTOR_INBOX, LANE_STATE, ADVOCATE_QUEUE, EXECUTOR_QUEUE, STALE_OR_OVERCOORDINATION, and SYNC_HEALTH.
  • Requires every projection row to carry provenance (raw_event_ids / payload_ref / artifact_ref) so drill-back stays possible and summaries don't become a new stale-read source.
  • Codifies backpressure exemptions (high severity, operator/CONDUCTOR-addressed, decision_needed, failing sync, security/legal/reputation flags, user overrides) and the CONDUCTOR stop reasons (STOP_PASS, STOP_STANDBY, STOP_HANDOFF, STOP_BLOCKED, STOP_COST, STOP_USER_DECISION). Reaffirms that STOP_SYNC_PROTECTION is not valid — bridge sync must never halt over a dirty generated/render-only artifact.
• CI — actions bumped to Node 24-ready majors (.github/workflows/ci.yml). actions/checkout v4 → v6 and actions/setup-python v5 → v6.
• Tests — stale-entity dates made relative (tests/test_lazy_enrichment.py). TestStaleEntities now derives updated_at from datetime.now(UTC) - timedelta(days=...) instead of hard-coded 2025/2026 timestamps, so the staleness assertions don't rot as the calendar advances.

Notes

• Documentation, CI, and test-only changes — no behavioral or schema changes and no migration required.