Landing batch of settled worker fixes, each reviewed and verified before settling:
mason: bound descriptors retained by bash task history
Word the task descriptor release note for users
mason: reduce disk-limit walks and health census churn
Word the disk-limit release note for users
mason: reap language servers when project roots are deleted
Word the deleted-root language server release note for users
mason: allow an initial inspect lease attempt after slow preparation
mason: retry merge-queue PR association lookup
mason: report unconfirmed created Swift syntax as unknown
mason: retry transient Swift compiler discovery
mason: tolerate in-flight Windows replacement in frozen LSP test
Summary by cubic
Lands a batch of settled worker fixes, each reviewed and verified before settling. Adds user-facing release notes for the behavior changes.
Bug Fixes
Finished and recovered background commands no longer keep a folder handle open each, so a long command history can't exhaust the daemon's open-file limit.
Language servers started for a project shut down as soon as the project folder is deleted, instead of running until the idle timeout (fixes #631).
aft_inspect no longer reports a writer-lease timeout when slow cache preparation exhausts the retry budget but no other process holds the cache.
A new Swift file reports its syntax check as unknown, not invalid, when the compiler check times out or fails transiently; transient compiler discovery failures are retried.
Merge-queue PR association lookup retries transient empty responses instead of failing the run.
A temporary filesystem failure in the root-presence check no longer disables file watching for that root.
Performance
The disk-limit background check reduces re-measurement of unchanged folders by about 94%, and the health summary does less work per tick.
Health census rendering now moves prebuilt root JSON instead of reserializing, cutting CPU per tick.
Semantic view fills reuse verified resident chunk vectors so one-file edits avoid SQLite payload reads, and same-epoch touches skip the write transaction entirely.
Confidence Score: 5/5
The PR appears safe to merge; no new actionable issues remain.
Summary
This batch reduces retained task handles and repeated disk work. It also shuts down language servers for deleted projects, improves inspect lease acquisition, and reports unfinished Swift checks as unknown.
Disk-limit checks reuse unchanged file sizes between walks.
Semantic fills reuse verified chunk vectors and skip unneeded writes.
Deleted project roots now trigger language-server cleanup.
New Swift files show unknown syntax when checks cannot confirm them.
Background task history no longer keeps a folder handle per command.
Health summaries reuse unchanged rows and report rollup timings.
Inspect cache opening makes its first lease attempt after slow preparation.
Merge-queue lookup retries empty PR results and checks the final queue ref.
Windows test helpers tolerate file replacement and slower actor startup.
The ancestry checks did not pass, so the full PR diff was reviewed as the changes since the previous review.
