What changed

The README now opens with the selected dark product hero. It shows the real Download page and contains no release number, so the artwork won't become stale after the next update.

The README check keeps that hero first and allows exactly one reference. It also verifies the 1280 by 640 output and rejects release text in the source.

Reliability

Queue writes are now serialized. Starting a download while a deferred queue save is running no longer risks a false disk or permissions error.

Verification

All nine local release gates passed. The suite collected 1,328 Python tests, with 1,327 passing and one permission-dependent symlink test skipped. The 85-state offscreen GUI review also passed. Both Windows package layouts completed their version probes.

The Windows builds are currently unsigned. SHA-256 sidecars, the dependency lock and the CycloneDX SBOM are included with the downloads.