hotfix.yml was deleted (folded into release.yml). Remove the now-broken
release-coverage-scope and policy-release-no-npm-self-upgrade assertions that
readFileSync'd hotfix.yml (release.yml equivalents retained), drop the dead
install-smoke.yml path trigger, and update VERSIONING.md / docs/branching.md
prose to describe hotfixes via the Release workflow with a patch version.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Release jobs ran `npm install -g npm@latest` before each publish step,
adding ~30 s and version drift risk on every run; removed both occurrences,
relying on Node 24's bundled npm pinned via setup-node. Added a policy test
(tests/policy-release-no-npm-self-upgrade.test.cjs) that will fail RED if
the antipattern is re-introduced in release.yml or hotfix.yml. Fixes#318.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
