CI Gates Hardening, Scheduler Fragility Surfacing, and the Contributor Pulse You Can't Ignore

Infrastructure

Repo Pulse: Issue Time-to-Close Spikes and Contributor Churn

The repo pulse is showing a concerning spike in issue time-to-close and a drop in external contributor PRs. This isn't just noise; it's a leading indicator of maintainer bandwidth strain and growing technical debt.

Bug Tracker

Issue #1540: Scheduler Fails on Mixed CJS/ESM Module Loads

This new report isolates a critical path dependency: the scheduler is failing under mixed-version module loads. It's a direct consequence of the ESM migration and affects any production system with gradual rollouts.

CI/CD

CI Runner Deprecation Turns From Warning to Error

The deprecation warning is now an error for ubuntu-18.04 runners in the core CI pipeline. If your test matrix hasn't been updated, your PRs are blocked. This is a forcing function for modernization.