Run deterministic installer and publisher checks in Nix, align dev and release dependency artifacts, narrow derivation inputs, and use content-aware CI cache keys. Replace duplicate Cargo gates with a Nix pre-push gate; validate JSON streams and cache data in representative packaged-binary smoke cases.
Clear the smoke cache before each cache-group warm case so the following offline and stale-cache checks always start from a fresh baseline instead of earlier group state.
Document the runner behavior in the smoke guide to make the cache-group sequencing explicit.
