isAllowedLocalReadPath now resolves the candidate via fs.realpathSync and requires both the lexical and canonical paths to satisfy the policy, so a symlink placed under an allowed prefix that points outside the allowlist is rejected. The redundant 'either resolved or realResolved is allowed' check in read-local-file and generate-wallpaper-thumbnail is removed since the function canonicalizes internally. Adds a regression test that creates such a symlink (skipping when Windows refuses to create it without Developer Mode).
build-whisper-runtime now only soft-fails when invoked from postinstall, in CI, or with WHISPER_RUNTIME_ALLOW_MISSING=1. Direct 'npm run build*' invocations fail loudly when CMake is missing and no bundled runtime is staged so we don't ship release builds with broken auto-captioning.
isAllowedLocalReadPath previously returned true for any existing path because of an existsSync fast-path, which made the read-local-file IPC handler and the local media URL policy effectively allow reading arbitrary files on disk. Drop the existsSync bypass so only paths under app-managed directories or paths that have been explicitly approved (via dialogs, exports, recording sessions, etc.) are accepted. Adjust the local media path policy tests to cover the new behaviour.
Also make build-whisper-runtime fall back to bundled artifacts when CMake is missing (mirroring build-windows-capture) so npm ci does not fail on machines without a C++ toolchain.
webadderall