2.1.0 — quick-wins train: brief load, offline-durable capture, session-end verb

Three independently useful changes (IMPROVEMENT-PLANS #1/#3/#7), no schema changes:

- load --brief: token-budgeted cold-start digest (facts full, last-10 observations,
  scope+freshness, last session's key sections, agent-log lines, inbox count;
  ECHO_LOAD_BUDGET ~8000 chars, lowest-priority-first trimming). SessionStart hook
  injects the brief form; /echo-load keeps the full dump. All load reads (+ the
  sessions listing, which also feeds the heartbeat fallback) fetched in parallel.
- Offline capture durability: a fully-offline capture queues the WHOLE op as one
  semantic record; flush replays it through capture so routing/gate/aliasing re-run
  against the current index; a gate stop on replay is kept + flagged
  (needs_attention, surfaced by flush and load), never landed blind; update-path
  and ensure_daily_log writes ride safe_request; same-args captures dedupe.
- session-end: one call, one lock — session log -> agent-log line -> reflect
  proposals (gate-aware) -> optional scope set -> heartbeat LAST as the commit
  marker; dry-run default; ECHO_NOW pins HHMM; validation runs before any write.
  Stop hook nudge names the command and recognizes it as reflected.
- Fix: main() now catches the __main__ twin-module EchoError (via RuntimeError +
  .code) so helper-module errors exit with their intended codes, not tracebacks.

+19 e2e checks; all suites green. Plans renumbered: MCP container is 2.2.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,5 +1,63 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## 2.1.0
+
+The "quick-wins train" from the 2026-07-28 review (`docs/IMPROVEMENT-PLANS.md` #1,
+#3, #7). Three independently useful changes; no schema or layout changes.
+
+### Added — `load --brief`: a token-budgeted cold-start digest
+
+The SessionStart hook injected the full text of six files every session (measured
+15.9KB and growing without bound — Observations and Scope History never shrink).
+`load --brief` renders a digest instead: Fact / Pattern rules in full, the last ~10
+Observations (with a `+N older` note), scope + `scope_updated` + sessions-since,
+the heartbeat-pointed session log's key sections (Goal / Decisions Made / Open
+Threads / Suggested Next Step), today's Agent Log lines, and the inbox as a
+**count + oldest age** — everything the load-time reconcile needs. Over
+`ECHO_LOAD_BUDGET` (default ~8000 chars), sections trim lowest-priority-first
+(observations → agent log → session summary) with explicit `(truncated)` markers.
+The hook now injects the brief form; `/echo-load` and the manual procedure keep the
+full dump. All `load` reads (plus the sessions listing, which also feeds the
+heartbeat-absent fallback) are fetched **in parallel** over the pooled connections.
+
+### Fixed — capture is now offline-durable (the write path's inversion bug)
+
+Low-level verbs queued on an outage, but the *default* write (`capture`) died: the
+update path's POST/PATCH and `ensure_daily_log` bypassed the queue entirely, and an
+unreachable index aborted the whole op. Now: (1) a fully-offline `capture` queues
+the **whole operation as one semantic record** (title/kind/body/tags/…, plus the
+capture-time date); `flush` replays it **through `capture`** so create-vs-update,
+the duplicate gate, and aliasing re-run against the index as it is at replay time —
+byte-level replay would freeze a decision made blind. (2) A duplicate-gate stop on
+replay keeps the record, flags it `needs_attention` (surfaced by `flush` and
+`load`), and does NOT block later records. (3) Mid-capture outages: the update
+path and `ensure_daily_log` writes ride `safe_request` (accepted edge: a queued
+agent-log PATCH 400-drops loudly if the daily note never existed — the trace line,
+not the memory). Same-args offline captures dedupe by idem-key.
+
+### Added — `session-end`: the one-call session close
+
+`echo.py session-end <bundle.json> [--apply]` performs the whole end-of-session
+sequence under ONE lock acquisition, in order: session log PUT → Agent Log line →
+reflect proposals (via `capture`, gate-aware) → optional `scope set` → **heartbeat
+LAST as the commit marker** (a part-way failure leaves the previous pointer intact,
+never dangling). Dry-run by default previews the full plan including the reflect
+classification. Filename HHMM from `$ECHO_NOW` (else local clock), validated
+against the canonical session-log regex **before any write**. The Stop hook's nudge
+now names the command, and recognizes a `session-end` invocation as
+"already reflected".
+
+### Fixed — helper-module errors exited 2 instead of their intended codes
+
+When `echo.py` runs as `__main__`, helper modules' `import echo` creates a twin
+module whose `EchoError` is a different class object, so `main()`'s handler missed
+it and the raw traceback leaked. The handler now catches `RuntimeError` (both
+classes subclass it) and honors `.code`.
+
+Tests: +19 end-to-end checks (brief-load digest/budget, offline-capture queue /
+replay-through-capture / gate-on-replay / idem-key dedup, session-end dry-run /
+apply / ordering / validation-abort). All suites green.
+
 ## 2.0.0
 
 **Packaging & structure major — nothing about memory behavior changes.** The major