Prepare v0.1.44-beta.1: updater recovery, channels and opt-in continuity

[Obed0101]

Updating a damaged installation could stall before replacement, and competing clients could open the session database before backend ownership was established. This integration adds staged installation with durable progress and retained binaries, channel preferences and attested release indexes, guarded database ownership, and backend-only execution for run and stats.

It also integrates opt-in continuity tools and questions under the existing session executor, Ctrl+T widgets, bounded session recall/notes, model-family prompts and optional balanced reasoning Auto. All experimental flags default off. Native OpenAI async/steering remains disabled.

The Linux PR workflow installs frozen pnpm dependencies, prepares the fixture model catalog, typechecks, and exercises updater/runtime contracts in separate processes and temporary databases. Bundled GitLab/Poe modules use the existing legacy plugin loading boundary for upstream SDK types. Run arguments use JSON serialization to preserve quotes and backslashes.

Validation performed locally:

• Package typecheck passes. Seven latest CLI/server regressions pass with 60 assertions, including subprocess success, session failure and HTTP rejection without opening a local database.
• Earlier focused installer/storage/runtime/provider/TUI tests and release-index generator tests passed; these are not a complete repository or platform acceptance run.
• A compiled macOS artifact successfully runs statistics and reaches the shared backend from run. The deliberate missing-model check performs no provider call. Earlier isolated installation/upgrade PTY checks rendered Setup, preserved a session from v0.1.42 and connected two terminals to one backend.
• All storage checks use temporary databases; no real installation was replaced.

CI on commit 4f2e8a9f702c2ad06ffe95112c6e23251c79d22a: 153 Bun tests passed with zero failures on Linux, release-index Node tests and typecheck passed, and repository guards, dependency review, deep security scanners and CodeQL all passed. Runtime evidence. This includes the existing-executor continuity wake fixture; it does not represent native installer/TUI or live-provider coverage on every platform.

Windows PowerShell 5.1 acceptance exposed and fixed a BOM-less Unicode parsing error, a null backup-path conversion in atomic status writes, and hash-module auto-loading incompatibility. Native Windows CI now passes installation over a damaged executable, checksum rejection, HTTP failure and truncation preservation. Installer evidence.

This targets v0.1.44-beta.1 with experimental flags off by default. Package base version is 0.1.44 and the beta changelog is included. The release workflow is building exact candidate 080ef14749b6359745fd6ed8ab20c8e5ab184616 before publication. It remains a prerelease, not a stable promotion. The preceding CI-built Darwin arm64 beta artifact was installed in a temporary home and rendered Setup with a backend/TUI readiness receipt in 1,168 ms; the final artifacts receive their own checks.

Outstanding stable-promotion work includes remaining local data-command ownership, legacy-writer migration compatibility, standalone installer provenance, Windows deferred activation/rollback, native API/subscription validation and full continuity/reconnect acceptance. The original existing-installation v0.1.43 incident cause is not confirmed. Beta publication preserves these disclosed limits; it does not close the complete continuity plan. No stable release or main promotion is included.