diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 082ee62dc..0ab94ea9d 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,79 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## [1.78.0.0] - 2026-08-31
+
+**Both red weekly lanes are green again, and 18 community fixes land with credit.**
+**The upgrade path can no longer delete your install.**
+
+The fix wave. The weekly periodic eval lane broke at v1.76: the spawned-session rule let the model infer "nobody is reading this" from any scripted-looking prompt and silently auto-decide every review question, so plan reviews stopped asking. reviewCount collapsed to 0 across four skills. The trigger is now objective: the echoed `SESSION_KIND: spawned` status line or an explicit "you are a SPAWNED subagent" declaration in the dispatch prompt, never an inference. CI env vars and pasted-looking tasks are named as non-markers. The reproduced failure went from 0 review questions to a full question flow on the same harness.
+
+The weekly OSV lane had been red for three weeks with 105 advisories, and its suppression file had been silently inert since v1.65 (wrong filename for auto-discovery, and per-directory configs never covered the nested lockfile anyway). The workflow now passes an explicit global `--config`, a dependency pass cleared 102 advisories through in-range bumps and overrides that actually reach nested exact pins, and the 3 survivors carry reasons plus `ignoreUntil` expiries. The diagram-render bundle lost its duplicate mermaid on the way: 9.96 MB to 7.59 MB.
+
+Eighteen community PRs are absorbed with authorship preserved, twelve of them with wave amendments that finish a gap or fix a defect found in review. Nine more confirmed bugs are fixed directly, led by #2679: a failed `mktemp` in the vendored upgrade path used to `rm -rf` your install's backup after a failed swap. The swap now aborts loudly and restores the backup.
+
+### The numbers that matter
+
+Sources: OSV scanner v2.3.8 (the exact release CI pins) on a frozen clean install; weekly CI runs 33369295978 (OSV) and 33363624506 (periodic); local A/B repro of `test/skill-e2e-plan-ceo-finding-count.test.ts`; `bun run test` on this tree vs a v1.77.0.0 scratch worktree.
+
+| Property | Before | After |
+|---|---|---|
+| OSV advisories on `./` recursive scan | 105 (24 packages, lane red 3 weeks) | 0, exit 0 (3 expiring reasoned ignores) |
+| Suppression config | inert since v1.65 | loaded via explicit `--config`, wiring-tested |
+| Periodic-lane review questions (5-finding plan) | reviewCount=0 (14/73 shards red) | full question flow on the same repro |
+| Failed upgrade swap | deletes backup and install | restores backup, aborts loudly |
+| Community PRs absorbed / issues closed | 40 open PRs, 17 of these issues open | 18 absorbed with credit, 17 issues closed |
+| diagram-render offline bundle | 9.96 MB (duplicate mermaid 10 + 11) | 7.59 MB |
+| Free-suite tests | 8,519 | 8,630 (+111; receipts red on v1.77) |
+
+### What this means for you
+
+Plan reviews ask their questions again, `browse stop` actually stops Chromium, secrets scanning can't be silently disabled by a failed `mktemp` or a slow gitleaks probe, and /gstack-upgrade cannot eat your install on a bad temp dir. If you filed one of the 17 closed issues or the 18 absorbed PRs: your fix shipped, with your name on it. Upgrade with /gstack-upgrade.
+
+### Itemized changes
+
+#### Fixed
+
+- **AskUserQuestion spawned-trigger objectivity (periodic-lane regression).** The v1.76 rule's "(or your dispatch prompt marks this session as spawned)" allowed inference; plan-review E2Es collapsed to zero questions. Trigger is now the echoed STATUS line or an explicit dispatch declaration, with an absence-safe interactive fence that is quota-silent (it classifies the session and never changes how many questions a skill asks). Task-tool subagents keep the prose channel (they inherit the parent env, so the dispatch prompt is their only spawned signal); #2733's env-prefix channel is untouched, and the escape sentence in both AUQ hooks now says "declared, never inferred."
+- **mktemp guards at all three skill-content sites (#2679).** redact-doc resolver, ship pr-body, and the vendored upgrade path abort loudly on mktemp failure; the upgrade swap restores the backup on a failed `mv` instead of deleting it; the GitLab MR path sends the scanned file's bytes instead of re-rendering an unscanned heredoc; `gstack-redact --from-file ""` errors instead of silently reading stdin.
+- **OSV lane green (supersedes #2695).** Explicit `--config` (auto-discovered configs apply per-directory and never covered `lib/diagram-render/bun.lock`); `overrides` pin ip-address 10.3.1 (clears both nested nodes, including express-rate-limit's exact 10.1.0 pin that a top-level bump provably cannot reach — @anupamme's #2695 credited for the parallel diagnosis) and sharp 0.35.0 (smoke-tested); marked ^18.0.11; full in-range lockfile refresh; diagram-render bumped through its own build-script contract (mermaid 11.16.1, excalidraw 0.18.1, mermaid-to-excalidraw 1.1.2 → 2.2.2, which retires the entire duplicate mermaid-10 advisory chain); every ignore carries a reason, an upgrade trigger, and an `ignoreUntil` expiry, pinned by a new wiring test so the file can never go inert again.
+- **A slow gbrain `--version` probe classifies as `timeout`, never `no-cli` (#2716).** A bun-shim install on a loaded box silently lost every brain-aware block because `no-cli` is the one status `--is-ok` does not forgive.
+- **codex skill: unclosed consult-mode fence, `turn.failed` reported as a failure, portable exit-code capture (#2671, #2669).** Every fenced region after the unclosed fence rendered inverted; a stated turn failure read as a "possible disconnect" (consult mode had no completeness check at all); `${PIPESTATUS[0]}` is empty under zsh so hang detection never fired and clean runs printed spurious exit noise. A repo-wide CommonMark-faithful fence-pairing test now guards every generated doc, and the exit-capture form is executed under real bash and zsh in tests. Expect `codex_timeout` telemetry to start firing for zsh users — that's the counter working, not a regression.
+- **Outside-voice fallback labeled honestly (#2735).** When Codex is unavailable the fallback reviewer is a same-family Claude subagent; the copy no longer sells it as "cross-model coverage" with "genuine independence."
+- **skill_prefix works under a gbrain render (#2738).** gstack-relink now name-patches the render tree — the file the host actually serves.
+- **Rendered section paths survive the atomic swap (#2692).** gen-skill-docs gained `--link-root`; the swap-in callers pass the final dir, so rendered skills no longer carry ~9 dead Read paths into a directory the swap just deleted.
+- **Persistent timeline Stop hook opt-out (#2677).** `--no-team` stays one-shot; the new `timeline_stop_hook` config key (flags, env, full gstack-config surface) survives upgrades, and an explicit "no" removes a live registration.
+- **browse: macOS headless GPU spin tamed + the lock-less headless Chromium is reaped on stop (#2709).** Darwin-gated flag set (reporter-validated, `GSTACK_DISABLE_GPU=off` escape) exposed as a pure, unit-testable function; the daemon records the launched child's pid + start time, and stop paths reap a survivor only after verifying both the recorded start time and a Chromium-looking cmdline, so a recycled PID is never killed.
+- **gstack-wtree: a failed `touch` falls through to the HEAD seed (#2687 hardening).** The underlying same-size-rewrite race was fixed in v1.74; the reporter's repro now runs 20/20 clean, and the one silent path that could reopen it is closed.
+
+#### Community PRs absorbed (authorship preserved on the branch commits)
+
+- Codex preflight: a CLI that cannot execute reports `broken_install`, never `ready` — the wave completed autoplan's hand-maintained preflight chain and narrowed the install-signature grep to failed spawns. Contributed by @ukheni50 (#2745; fixes #2742).
+- ship design-checklist path points at the installed gstack/review copy. Contributed by @Lockyer228 (#2717; fixes #2694).
+- Feature markers live in GStack state, not project checkouts — the wave re-applied the CI seeding to the composite action and added an upgrade migration so nobody gets re-prompted. Contributed by @simonaltit (#2748; fixes #2728).
+- memory-ingest: transcript pages no longer vanish to slug collisions (887 staged → 0 ingested) or a frontmatter-fence render bug. Contributed by @rayers (#2699; fixes #2724).
+- browse js/eval returns the value of an async IIFE. Contributed by @loulanyue (#2747; fixes #2727).
+- land-and-deploy checks fork branches in the head repository — the wave replaced the metadata command (gh leaves `nameWithOwner` empty) and made fork branches report-only. Contributed by @pttydou (#2725; fixes #2696).
+- gstack-config rejects malformed `cross_project_learnings` at set. Contributed by @szsunyuan (#2676; fixes #2673).
+- gbrain-sync's pinned-source test is hermetic under a live autopilot. Contributed by @szsunyuan (#2689; fixes #2685).
+- redact: stale managed pre-push hooks refresh in place, so shipped wrapper fixes reach existing installs. Contributed by @schienbiz (#2731).
+- redact: Groq, Tavily, and Notion API key patterns. Contributed by @schienbiz (#2730).
+- redact: `.env.local` is not an internal hostname. Contributed by @davidani-davi (#2740).
+- redact: git SSH remotes are not emails — the wave named the lookahead constant. Contributed by @alopes50 (#2734).
+- gbrain ≥0.43 held-lock refusal classifies as engine-locked, not broken-config. Contributed by @pvanl (#2698).
+- A slow gitleaks probe no longer permanently disables secret scanning. Contributed by @deniszjukow (#2715).
+- open-gstack-browser pre-flight actually kills the stale daemon (the pid grep never matched pretty-printed JSON). Contributed by @deniszjukow (#2714).
+- browse CLI honours CHROMIUM_PROFILE in profile-lock cleanup — the wave added the wiring tripwire. Contributed by @adam-badar (#2732).
+- make-pdf's pdftotext probe reads poppler's stderr banner instead of reporting "unknown" everywhere. Contributed by @snymanpaul (#2690).
+- bin writers no longer drop learnings and question events on paths with apostrophes; MSYS-form GSTACK_HOME works — the wave unified all four writers on the env-var import pattern. Contributed by @shreshth-designs (#2720).
+
+#### For contributors
+
+- Tests: 8,519 → 8,630 (+111 across the wave; every behavior fix carries a regression test proven red on a v1.77.0.0 scratch worktree via base-compatible reproducers — tests that merely fail to compile on the base don't count as receipts).
+- New structural guards: generated-doc fence pairing (CommonMark state machine, not mod-2 counting), no bare `${PIPESTATUS[0]}` in codex sections (plus real bash+zsh execution), OSV config wiring (flag ↔ filename ↔ entry hygiene, `ignoreUntil` mandatory), gstack-redact CLI empty-path rejection, cli.ts profile-dir delegation.
+- 19 carve skeleton ceilings re-pinned with measured values (+~440 bytes/skill for the AUQ fence); autoplan re-pinned again for the broken-install preflight arm.
+- `gen-skill-docs --link-root` exists for render-into-tmp-then-swap callers; direct-render callers need no change.
+- The absorbed test files gained spawn timeouts (v1.77 sync-spawn tripwire predates them).
+
 ## [1.77.0.0] - 2026-08-31
 
 **Every PR stops paying for evals twice.**
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 6734beb17..25b7633be 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-1.77.0.0
+1.78.0.0
diff --git a/agents-digest/gstack-AGENTS.md b/agents-digest/gstack-AGENTS.md
index b73164ced..c0f3c675b 100644
--- a/agents-digest/gstack-AGENTS.md
+++ b/agents-digest/gstack-AGENTS.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# gstack digest v1.77.0.0 — regenerate/re-copy after upgrading gstack
+# gstack digest v1.78.0.0 — regenerate/re-copy after upgrading gstack
 
 Behavioral rules from gstack (https://github.com/garrytan/gstack), compressed
 for agent hosts without a full skill install. The full skills add workflows,
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index cfb0d96aa..6cc948527 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "gstack",
-  "version": "1.77.0",
+  "version": "1.78.0",
   "description": "Garry's Stack — Claude Code skills + fast headless browser. One repo, one install, entire AI engineering workflow.",
   "license": "MIT",
   "type": "module",