May 2026 monthly summary for music-assistant/server: Focused on stabilizing protocol-based playback recovery and reliability of protocol endpoints. Delivered a robust fix for protocol player recovery when a cached parent ID points to a non-registered parent, preventing dangling links and enabling proper delayed evaluation scheduling. Implemented a 45-second grace window to wait for native providers to register before creating a Universal Player, preserving startup intent and avoiding premature duplicates. Expanded test coverage for missing cached parent scenarios and delayed evaluation, and validated via black-box container tests and end-to-end checks. This work reduces user-visible outages for protocol-based playback, improves startup reliability, and strengthens system correctness in mixed-registry environments.

Concise monthly summary for 2026-01 (music-assistant/server): Stability improvement for Spotify Connect playback by refining event handling during disconnects, with focus on preventing playback thrashing and accidental reactivation of sessions. Tech debt reduction and stable baseline for Spotify-related features.