v13.12.2

## v13.12.2 — The Merge Sweep

**54 community bug-fix PRs merged in one pass.** Every open PR in the repo (157 total) was evaluated against a strict rubric — now codified in [`docs/merge-rubric.md`](https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem/blob/main/docs/merge-rubric.md): root-cause corrections only, with no guards, circuit breakers, fallbacks, retries, fail-open modes, self-healing machinery, truncation, or bolt-on second systems.

### Windows
- Zombie-held worker ports now detected correctly, ending infinite startup-failure loops (#3356)
- Console-flash sweep: `windowsHide` on every remaining live spawn path — git, npm, IDE detection, Codex installer, worker wrapper, taskkill, MCP launcher (#3335, #3320, #3319, #3305, #2921)
- `bun.exe` resolved to its absolute path and spawned directly, skipping `cmd.exe` (which silently drops >8191-char PATH) (#3235, #3247)
- Worker ESM main detection via `pathToFileURL` (#3318); UTF-8 BOM tolerated in settings JSON read (#3307)
- `Start-Process` argument quoting survives spaced profile paths (#3293); `codex.cmd` shim quoting fixed (#3220)
- PowerShell call operator (`&`) added to Cursor/Windsurf hook commands (#2507)
- Missing Windows credential treated as absent instead of a spurious read failure (#3265); tests run on Windows via `fileURLToPath` (#3312)

### Search & data integrity
- Semantic search preserves Chroma relevance ranking instead of silently reordering by recency (#3325)
- `type=<custom>` and non-category `type` filters no longer return empty results (#3281); `date_from`/`date_to` honored in worker searches (#3201)
- Merged-project records hydrate correctly on semantic-search ID lookups and worktree adoption patches Chroma by typed doc targets (#3342)
- `getUserPromptsByIds` applies `limit` after relevance reordering (#3347)
- Chroma watermark gaps persist across bootstrap and live sync — no more permanently stranded rows (#3364); duplicate IDs reconciled in place, stopping unbounded index growth (#3268)
- Custom observation types preserved instead of being misclassified as `bugfix` (#3185); `files_modified` is now evidence-gated from actual write/edit tool events (#3180)
- Tool payloads no longer double-encoded in observation prompts (#3150)
- Context generation opens SQLite strictly read-only under concurrent sessions (#3233)
- MCP `tools/list` advertises only tools that work in the active runtime (#3065); `search` routes to the Postgres-backed `/v1/search` in server runtime when it can serve the query faithfully (#3082)

### Worker & providers
- `CLAUDE_MEM_MAX_CONCURRENT_AGENTS` actually enforced via atomic slot reservations (#3294)
- Observations attributed to the current prompt's project after repo/worktree switches (#3237); claimed batches preserved on auth-failure prose instead of being deleted (#3236)
- Worker startup waits through cold and concurrent readiness windows (#3238)
- Observer thinking disabled so thinking-only skips can't trigger harness re-prompts (#3256); observer SDK sessions no longer pollute the user's project transcript tree (#2942)
- `CLAUDE_MEM_TIER_SUMMARY_MODEL` honored on OpenAI-compatible providers (#3257)
- Stale default model ids updated: Sonnet/Opus (#3187) and retired Gemini models (#3283)
- `__IMPORTANT` MCP tool renamed `important_workflow` so strict clients can load the server (#3295); tsconfig `moduleResolution` moved to `bundler` for TS 6 (#3296)

### Hooks, context & installers
- `CLAUDE_MEM_EXCLUDED_PROJECTS` honored on session-start injection (#3358); subagents without MCP tools skip file-context injection (#3341)
- `~` expanded in `CLAUDE_MEM_DATA_DIR` (#3350) and `CLAUDE_CODE_PATH` (#3275); Homebrew `uvx` path shared with the worker preflight (#3276)
- SessionStart no longer dumps raw JSON at the top of every session (#3282); Codex no longer receives a duplicate context payload (#3241) and transcripts continue after archival (#3223)
- Worktree compound keys preserved from subdirectories (#3304)
- Azure AI Foundry auth env preserved through the SDK sanitizer (#3314); invalid corpus names return 400 instead of 500 (#3251)
- Codex plugin cache actually installs during setup — best-effort wrapper deleted, fail-fast (#3066)
- `mergeSettings` and server bootstrap no longer destroy top-level settings keys (#2928, #2929)
- version-bump skill frontmatter name matches its directory (#3313)

### Docs
- New [`docs/merge-rubric.md`](https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem/blob/main/docs/merge-rubric.md) — the acceptance bar for bug-fix PRs, distilled from this sweep.

Thanks to everyone who contributed fixes: @rodboev, @stantheman0128, @huiihao, @jamincollins, @quinnmacro, @justindeisler, @davertor, @BBD-Resources, @povesma, @laihenyi, @LPdsgn, @KJJisBetter, @Steaeavean, @XX888QM, @rapidtackgithub, @SamuelZ12, @DNA, @girish-kanjiyani7, @E0993599799, @eslonaguiar, @desmond-rai, @Reese-max, @Wasabi-221, @mic2112, @yaw-sh, @derrickchwong, @SaadSharif4, @katsugtgz, @manoi-bms, @percy-raskova, @ShiroKSH, @eralpozcan, @anupamme, @SejiL, @remten341, @danscMax, @jamesdsizemore, and the PostHog bot fleet.