Maintenance Walkthrough - 2026-03-12

Merged PRs #277, #272, #275, #278, and #271 via GitHub squash merge after bringing contributor branches into a mergeable state and refreshing PR bodies against the quality checklist in .github/MAINTENANCE.md.
Verified PR #271 locally with npm run validate:references and npm run test before merge; confirmed #269 auto-closed from the merged PR body.
Added a user-facing Windows truncation recovery guide at docs/users/windows-truncation-recovery.md, linked it from README.md, docs/users/faq.md, docs/users/getting-started.md, and docs/integrations/jetski-cortex.md, and credited the workflow to issue #274.
Updated skills/metasploit-framework/SKILL.md to remove the remote installer flow, require an existing Metasploit installation, and add the required offensive-skill warning.
Refreshed README.md to remove stale 7.2.0 / 7.4.0 onboarding copy, align the star badge with the current milestone, and fix the TOC link for ## Contributing.
Normalized the active English docs (README.md, user guides, Kiro guide, and evergreen maintainer docs) to the current 7.6.0 / 1,250+ skills state and removed emoji from H2 headers where maintenance rules require clean anchors.
Ran the required maintenance validations after the direct fixes:
- npm run validate
- npm run validate:references
- npm run chain
- npm run catalog
Final release prep, issue closure comments, and verification were completed on main.

Maintenance Walkthrough - 2026-03-13

Fixed tools/scripts/update_readme.py so normal npm run readme runs preserve the existing registry-sync star/timestamp values instead of rewriting them on every execution, which was causing non-deterministic PR drift failures in CI.
Updated tools/scripts/sync_repo_metadata.py to expose the same explicit --refresh-volatile behavior for live star/timestamp refreshes, keeping release/metadata refresh flows available without destabilizing contributor PR checks.
Updated .github/workflows/ci.yml so generated registry drift is informational on pull requests but still strict on main, with auto-sync remaining the canonical path for shared artifacts after merge.
Updated .github/MAINTENANCE.md, docs/maintainers/ci-drift-fix.md, and docs/maintainers/merging-prs.md to document the lower-friction merge flow: validate source changes on PRs, keep main for generated conflicts, and let main auto-sync the final artifact set.
Verified the fix with:
- python3 tools/scripts/update_readme.py --dry-run
- python3 tools/scripts/sync_repo_metadata.py --dry-run
- npm run readme
- npm run validate:references