v0.8.34 — a dead server is dead, not silent

Fixed

• A server that has already exited is reported as PROCESS_DIED, not as
  RESPONSE_TIMEOUT. Found by the 0.8.33 numtide packaging PR failing on that
  project's aarch64 builder while every x86_64 run passed: _stdio_request waits
  on a queue that is resolved either by the pump thread delivering its EOF
  sentinel (→ PROCESS_DIED) or by the deadline (→ RESPONSE_TIMEOUT), and on a
  loaded machine the deadline wins that race. The timeout branch never asked
  whether the process was still alive, so a server that had exited was reported
  as merely silent — the reader then goes looking for a slow server instead of a
  dead one. It now checks poll() before deciding, which is the direct signal and
  does not depend on the pump being scheduled; a server that is genuinely slow is
  still alive, so it still reports RESPONSE_TIMEOUT. The regression test forces
  the ordering (the child keeps stdout open, so no EOF ever arrives) and fails
  with the original RESPONSE_TIMEOUT != PROCESS_DIED on the previous code.
• The self-heal path also printed an unlabelled skill count (issue #40). The
  0.8.33 fix corrected the quickstart copy and missed the second call site in the
  same file — the one that runs on every command. Two places print "Skill catalog
  indexed"; the tests covering them asserted only the shared prefix, so nothing
  could tell them apart and mcptoon list still said N skill(s) routable. Both
  now say N entry/entries routable, and the presence test pins the caliber
  rather than the prefix so the two sites cannot drift again.

Docs

• The channel ledger tracked a winget obligation against a PR that had been
  closed for eight days. AGENTS.md named #443014 (0.8.3) as the open
  submission; verified against the live API, #443014 and #450462 (0.8.17) were
  closed unmerged on 2026-10-21 and #457898 (0.8.25) on 2026-10-24, leaving
  #460772 (0.8.27) as the only one open. release_sync.py reads the live number
  and was always right, which is exactly why nothing caught the prose drifting.