[mbianchidev]

Changes

• Pin Node.js 26.12.1 in .nvmrc and use it for tests, Pages deployment and version preparation.
• Pin release jobs explicitly to the same version so retries can still check out older tags without .nvmrc.
• Upgrade the frontend build and both backend Docker stages to node:26.12.1-bookworm-slim.
• Include runtime pin changes in renderer, browser and backend CI path filters, and update the related setup/deployment/release documentation.
• Preserve the existing Node.js >=22.22.0 supported minimum and leave manifests and lockfiles unchanged. Installed React and React DOM are already the latest stable 19.3.1.

Verification

All local commands used the checksum-verified Node.js 26.12.1 runtime with npm 11.20.0.

• Clean root and backend dependency installations, including Electron/native lifecycle checks.
• Both dependency audits: zero vulnerabilities.
• Full renderer suite: 1,560 tests passed. Full backend suite: 366 tests passed.
• Production browser regressions: all 43 passed.
• Pages build, full Electron/embedded-backend build, and actual macOS arm64 application packaging passed.
• Real in-memory SQLite opens passed under Node, Electron and the Linux backend container.
• All four changed workflows passed actionlint.
• Both Compose images built with --no-cache; the isolated Porto stack passed explicit backend health and frontend HTTP probes. Porto does not expose Docker health metadata, so the local scratch override used service_started plus explicit probes. Production Compose healthchecks are unchanged. All owned containers, volumes, networks and image tags were removed afterward.

Local macOS packaging used the repository's ad-hoc signing fallback because no Developer ID certificate is configured.

Scope

Latest stable releases were verified against the official Node.js distribution index and npm React/React DOM metadata on 2026-10-25. This repository has no Next.js, Go or Java application runtime. Python is used only through runner-provided release metadata helpers and an optional static-file preview command, with no separately managed application runtime to upgrade. No unrelated dependencies, application behavior or financial/storage semantics changed.