v3.8.40 cycle integration → main. All test gates green (Unit/Integration/Coverage/Node-compat/Quality-Ratchet). The only red check, 'PR Test Policy', is the test-masking heuristic firing on the cumulative ~57-commit release diff (legitimate assert consolidations already reviewed per-PR — Gemini CLI removal #5246, retired GPT models #5280, provider catalog refreshes); overridden with --admin per the documented release-PR convention. CodeQL/SonarQube advisory scans non-blocking; #5278's code already passed CodeQL on main. Homologated on VPS 192.168.0.15 (v3.8.40 healthy).
Allow image generation requests to omit prompts for models that only
accept image input, and validate required inputs from model metadata
instead of enforcing a text prompt for every request.
Treat authless search providers as executable with built-in defaults so
SearXNG can run without stored credentials, including during provider
auto-selection.
Also align runtime support with Node.js 24 LTS, harden thinking tag
compression and proxy wildcard matching, and update tests for the new
route and runtime behavior.
