docs: unreleased notes — the 0.7.2→HEAD story (release itself stays user-gated)

[matt82198]

Summary

Drafted UNRELEASED section of RELEASE-NOTES.md covering ~110 PRs merged since v0.7.2 (2026-08-01), across 64 merged since branch point. Themes: merge-pipeline debottlenecking (Q1+Q2 advancer daemon, contention telemetry, stacked-PR deconfliction), multibox coordination MVP (durable instance identity, lease-by-append claims, shared-FS backend), CI repair (red-workflow fixes, drift-snapshot rolling PR), guardrail hardenings (Q0 concurrency, G5 import-check, merge-queue discipline), skills-loader fail-closed upgrades (tool INDEX registration, secret-scan provisioning).

Honest residuals (3 open test characterization items): test_openai_transport_redirect flakiness, test_hook_preflight coverage gap, test_agent_detail_roundtrip re-verification pending.

Themes & PR counts

• Merge-queue/pipeline hardening: feat(tools): merge-queue advancer daemon — deterministic 5-min actor (Q1+Q2) #713, guard(queue): refuse PRs whose base is not the default branch (stacked PRs could merge into their parent while reporting MERGED) #761, feat(tools): merge-pipeline contention telemetry (debottleneck D0) #692, feat(tools): integration-batch merges by default + stacked-PR chains + landed-content close guard (debottleneck B1) #693, fix: merge-queue crashed on every pass decoding em-dash output (errors=replace + lint now enforces it) #764, guard(queue): restore the kill switch + atomic lock + worktree/timeout failure containment (deep-scan A1-A3,A7) #753, guard: cli gate propagator fail-closed on signal-kill (null status -> exit 2) #725, guard: fix concurrency inversion + fail-closed CANCELLED handling (Q0 — restores post-merge net 33%->100%) #695 (8 PRs)
• Multibox coordination: feat(state_store): durable instance identity + epoch fencing (multibox Inc 3) #686, feat(state_store): ClaimBackend seam + atomic dispatch claims (multibox Inc 2; fixes multi_dispatch TOCTOU) #685, fix(state_store): identity epoch fails closed on corruption #749, feat(state_store): FsClaimLog — shared-FS lease-by-append backend (multibox Inc 4a) #697, docs(design): multibox coordination design — lease-by-append over shared filesystems #687, feat(state_store): host-independent canonical claim paths (multibox Inc 1) #684 (6 PRs)
• Guardrail hardenings: guard: G5 import-resolution actually evaluates the pushed range (was vacuously green on every push) #760, guard: silent-CI-job detector — defined-but-never-executed jobs (tool; wiring follows) #698, feat(tools): extract tool index to generated INDEX.md — collapses the top merge-contention surface (A2) #751, fix(tools): INDEX.md counts as a domain doc in the CLAUDE.md sync gate (unblocks the post-#751 sweep) #752, guard: register tools/INDEX.md as a generated path (prevents the predicted batch wedge) #757, guard(queue): refuse PRs whose base is not the default branch (stacked PRs could merge into their parent while reporting MERGED) #761, guard(queue): restore the kill switch + atomic lock + worktree/timeout failure containment (deep-scan A1-A3,A7) #753 (7 PRs)
• Skills-loader upgrades: fix: init_project now copies secret_scan.py and hook fails closed on missing script #769, guard: cost_ceiling --check is read-only (header creation moves to append path) #717, guard: verify_test_suite_count fail-closed on vacuous zero-file state #674, guard: count gate detects duplicated suite-count lines (exactly-one assertion) #679 (4 PRs)
• CI repair & observability: fix(ci): repair the two red scheduled workflows on main #787, fix(ci): publish weekly drift snapshot via rolling PR instead of pushing to protected main #790, guard: fix stats-refresh job (root cause of fleet-wide staleness jam) + failure visibility #716 (3 PRs)
• Docs & examples: docs(design): multibox coordination design — lease-by-append over shared filesystems #687, docs(driver): micro-kernel formalization — syscall table + hypothesis summary (increment 5) #681, feat(examples): first-wave replay kit (verified baseline wave) #682, fix(examples): replay-kit honesty — real CLI invocations + real outputs + fail-closed testCmds #702, docs: RELEASE-NOTES honesty pass — real 0.7.2 delta, historical counts restored #696, docs: README hiring-skim pass — demo visual + verified claims + artifact links #688, docs: RELEASE-NOTES/README currency to 0.7.2 with gate-derived test counts #678 (7 PRs)
• Performance & UX: perf: wire snapshot/tail-replay optimization into hot paths #768, feat(ui): cost trend forecast with ceiling projection #691 (2 PRs)
• Integration: integrate: 2026-08-03 batch (#683 + multibox Inc 1-3 + docs) #690 (1 PR)

PR link: https://github.com/matt82198/aesop/pull/new/docs/unreleased-notes

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