The blanket package-lock.json gitignore rule meant the frontend lockfile was never committed, so every release installed whatever the registry handed it (silent transitive drift) and setup-node npm caching failed outright with unable to cache dependencies. Scope the ignore rule to the repo root (/package-lock.json; no root package.json exists) and commit the freshly updated frontend lockfile: all deps at max in-range versions (autoprefixer 10.5.6 -> 10.6.0), majors intentionally deferred to the v3 frontend refresh. Verified with a green vite build before committing.
