[Brian Krabach (bkrabach)]

A stopped conversation could remain blocked by an unfinished settings load even when the original save had completed. After Stop changed the original operation authority, neither resuming that load nor cancelling it could clear the hold.

The existing configuration.cancel action now cancels only the unfinished load after verifying the exact stopped native boundary and unchanged, sealed saved settings. It keeps those settings, preserves historical failures, and does not replay input or release an old continuation. Startup can finish publication of a cancellation already committed before an interruption; unrelated refreshes and fences remain protected.

Includes patch release 0.76.2 and authored What's new notes. No high-impact migration notice is needed because this repairs the existing recovery workflow. No dependency versions or bundled client bytes changed.

Validation:

• Independent review of the product, contract and regression changes: no findings.
• 11 maintained cancellation/restart regressions pass; the original success cases reproduced the defect before the fix.
• 329 adjacent configuration/recovery/update checks pass across two bounded runs. The first timed out after 284 passing cases; the remaining 45 passed separately. The original timeout is retained.
• Canonical client build and locked dependency dry-run pass; all 316 assets match the accepted client byte for byte. Candidate source and metadata match the isolated test environment.

Live recovery remains a separate adoption step; no successful live continuation is claimed by these tests.