Take the release as a number or a string, and never as zero

[adamjohnwright]

The chatbot session is changing release on the start event from the string "97" to an int, so that it matches /api/answer, which always sent one. They flagged it as a breaking wire change rather than letting us find it.

Accepting both spellings means neither side of that change breaks the panel.

The bigger find

The coercion that handled the string had a hole worth more than the rename:

Number(null)   // 0
Number('')     // 0
Number(false)  // 0

So an absent or empty release became release 0 — a number that sorts, compares and caches perfectly happily while naming no release that has ever existed. Now only a number or a non-empty string can be a release, and it has to be positive.

Dead state

The parsed value was stored in a private field nothing ever read. check:dead cannot see that, because a private field is not an export. The cache key deliberately excludes release (this cache lives in one page's memory, and a release during a session would replace the process holding it), so the field is removed rather than kept — a value nobody maintains is exactly what a later reader trusts.

Checks

• Each new case proved to fail against the code it replaces
• 445 unit tests green; lint 652 and dead-code 145 both unchanged from baseline

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