Retire the 2.0 prerelease lifecycle machinery after stable launch

[rmcdaniel]

Problem

Durable Workflow 2.0 is stable, but the organization still runs the one-time beta/RC candidate, continuity, release-plan, recovery-authority, and stable-authorization controllers used to reach the launch. Scheduled jobs are now failing against closed historical issues and superseded check identities. Component repositories also retain recovery consumers for that prerelease train.

This recreates a hidden lifecycle engine around GitHub, makes ordinary maintenance difficult for new contributors, and spends CI time policing immutable launch history.

Decision

GitHub issues and pull requests are the work record. Each component repository owns ordinary semantic-version CI and publication. GitHub Actions should run readable repository commands, not coordinate a cross-repository state machine. Historical tags and releases remain immutable; they do not need an active controller.

Preserve the public conformance runbook, regression-corpus schemas, issue forms and trusted-intake rule, and any small reusable check that still has a current repository consumer.

Required source targets

• durable-workflow/.github@main
• durable-workflow/workflow@v2
• durable-workflow/waterline@v2
• durable-workflow/server@main
• durable-workflow/cli@main
• durable-workflow/sdk-php@main
• durable-workflow/sdk-python@main
• durable-workflow/sdk-rust@main
• durable-workflow/durable-workflow.github.io@main

Acceptance criteria

• Remove or disable every scheduled beta/RC launch controller so no job acts on historical launch issues or prerelease workflow identities.
• Delete central launch-only workflows, scripts, schemas, fixtures, and tests; rely on Git history for historical implementation.
• Remove component release-plan recovery workflows and checks whose only purpose was the synchronized prerelease train.
• Preserve normal repository CI, package/image publication, stable version discovery, conformance guidance, regression fixtures, and GitHub issue intake policy.
• Replace stale prerelease-only version authority with a simple stable release surface before removing any current consumer.
• Remove pipeline/handoff vocabulary and generated ready-item behavior from remaining public workflows.
• Keep all affected target branches green and leave the active workflow list understandable at a glance.

Completion

Close when the listed repositories no longer contain or run the retired prerelease lifecycle machinery and ordinary stable maintenance/release paths are green.

[rmcdaniel]

Phase 1 landed in #116 as 264ef1c.

The central repository no longer runs the beta candidate, beta conformance retention, continuity drill, release-plan observer/writer/supersession, stable authorization, source/target audit, recovery reconciliation, Waterline train, or issue lifecycle controller. Sixteen workflows and 4,020 lines were removed. The remaining active organization workflows are one small repository check, the temporarily retained release-recovery consumer conformance check, the Rust documentation visual reusable workflow, and GitHub's dependency graph.

The replacement Shared contract tests check passed both before merge (33471646077) and on main after merge (33471798821). Branch protection and the repository ruleset now require that exact replacement check; protection was not bypassed.

Remaining work is downstream: remove component prerelease recovery consumers, replace the stale prerelease version authority used by docs, then delete their retained central contracts.

[rmcdaniel]

Waterline cleanup landed in durable-workflow/waterline#98 as 46da70dd8c2c0f7bcfcca3bf11fcfd3e30684448.

The v2 branch no longer contains the prerelease release-plan/recovery workflows, generated evidence machinery, or alternate-runner branches. Stable Composer and service-image publication, product tests, public boundary checks, and the live Server→SDK→Waterline tuple remain. All 25 PR checks passed. The obsolete release-plan-publication environment and its maintainer-review gate were deleted after confirming no workflow on the landed branch referenced it; stable tags use release-publication.

The next active downstream change is durable-workflow/server#79, replacing its retired qualified-onboarding authority with checked-in stable release metadata.