Merged as part of the 39-PR owner batch of 2026-09-11, validated as a unit.
Boarded into one consolidated worktree cut from `release/v3.8.51` with the other 38 — zero conflicts between them.
- ESLint over every changed file: no errors (the only finding was one suppression entry the batch emptied, pruned on #13243)
- `typecheck:core` clean; `check:dashboard-typecheck` OK (206 pre-existing, within baseline); `check:changelog-integrity` OK
- complexity 2821 / baseline 3218 and cognitive-complexity 1272 / baseline 1437 — both under baseline
- 256 assertions green: 246 under node:test and 10 under vitest, which is where `tests/unit/**/*.test.tsx` actually runs
- `check-file-size`: `chatCore.ts` rebaselined 6144 → 6146 for #13278 and #13276, annotated and landed on #13243⚠️ base-red inherited: #12732 — the provider count (356 in the docs vs the 358 the modules define) and `open-sse/utils/stream.ts` at 3115 > frozen 3098 both reproduce on the pure tip with zero contribution from this batch.
The desktop release matrix ran the full Next.js standalone build on all four legs (windows, macos-intel, macos-arm64, linux), duplicating the platform-neutral majority of that work four times and re-exposing every leg to the hosted-runner RAM class of failure that took the linux leg out of v3.8.49.
- scripts/build/standaloneTarball.mjs: deterministic, dependency-free tar.gz writer/reader (uid/gid/mtime pinned, sorted entries, symlink + exec-bit preservation; GNU-tar interop covered by tests).
- scripts/build/standaloneManifest.mjs: byte-level manifest of .build/next (sha256 + size + symlink target per entry, plus the archive's own digest) catching artifact-transfer corruption before extraction and re-verifying the restored tree byte-for-byte, smuggling included.
- scripts/build/standaloneBundle.mjs: pack / restore / hydrate CLI over the two modules above.
- scripts/build/hydrateNativeDeps.mjs: swaps install-machine-forked native optionals (@img/sharp-*, @ngrok/ngrok-*, fsevents) from the leg's own npm ci into the restored tree, then verifies the bundled-native closure (koffi triplets, better-sqlite3 prebuilds, wreq-js, onnxruntime with its documented darwin-x64 exemption) services the leg's platform/arch before packaging starts.
- .github/workflows/electron-release.yml: new web-build job builds the standalone once on ubuntu with webpack and uploads the bundle; legs download, restore, and hydrate it, skipping the per-leg build. The legacy per-leg build remains as a rollback path via the ELECTRON_SHARED_STANDALONE workflow_dispatch input, and legs fail closed if web-build ran and failed.
Regression tests cover archive roundtrip, byte determinism, manifest tamper/smuggle detection, forked-native swaps, and native-closure serviceability.
