[Anthony Kim (anthonykim1)]

Unblocks: #995

• Move GitHub Actions and the native-prebuild pipeline to Node.js 24.
• Drop node-pty's node-gyp development dependency and use the copy bundled with npm.
• Require Node.js 24 and npm 11.6.3 or newer through strict devEngines, so source checkouts fail early without changing the requirements for node-pty consumers.
• Update compileCommands to invoke the bundled node-gyp through npm_config_node_gyp.
• Regenerate the lockfile without node-gyp's dependency tree and remove the temporary package-release-age workaround.
• Keep the existing CI matrix so windows-11-arm continues to verify the native ARM64 build with Visual Studio 2026.

Validated locally on macOS arm64 with Node.js 24.18.0 and npm 11.16.0:

• npm ci --ignore-scripts — passed; 122 packages, 0 vulnerabilities.
• npm run build and npm run lint — passed.
• npm run compileCommands — passed with npm-bundled node-gyp@12.3.0.
• npm run install — built the native addon with npm-bundled node-gyp@12.3.0.
• npm test — 24 passing.

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Inspirations from:

• Visual Studio 2026 support comes from node-gyp's 18.x detection and v145 toolset mapping, first released in node-gyp 12.1.0.
• npm resolves its default node-gyp path to the copy that ships with npm and exports it as npm_config_node_gyp.
• The strict source-tooling requirements use npm's devEngines contract, which applies before install, ci, and run without imposing the same requirement on consumers.
• Native Windows ARM coverage remains in node-pty's build-test matrix.

[Robo (deepak1556)]

Can we drop the node-gyp dependency and rely on the bundled version from npm, our current use cases can be switched to it and avoids developer churn in managing this dependency. You can make engine requirements strict on the package manifest to support VS 2026