Resolves issue 1934, Reduce Mongoose hydration for read-only queries - #1974

Node.js 20 is deprecated. The following actions target Node.js 20 but are being forced to run on Node.js 24: actions/checkout@ee0669bd1cc54295c223e0bb666b733df41de1c5, actions/setup-node@f1f314fca9dfce2769ece7d933488f076716723e. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/