feat(watcher.node): Add automatic restart, periodic health checks, and safe event emission to Node watcher; improve logging and stat handling

changelog.md

@@ -1,5 +1,17 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## 2025-12-08 - 6.1.0 - feat(watcher.node)
+Add automatic restart, periodic health checks, and safe event emission to Node watcher; improve logging and stat handling
+
+- NodeWatcher: introduced safeEmit() to isolate subscriber errors and prevent watcher crashes
+- Auto-restart on failure with exponential backoff (1s → 30s) and up to 3 retry attempts per watched base path
+- Periodic health checks (every 30s) to detect missing watched paths and trigger automatic restarts
+- Handle unexpected FSWatcher 'close' events and restart watchers when they close silently
+- Verbose lifecycle logging with `[smartwatch]` prefix for start/stop/health/restart events
+- Clear restart tracking and stop health checks on watcher.stop() to ensure clean shutdown
+- Improved statSafe() to normalize followSymlinks logic and log non-ENO errors as warnings
+- Updated readme.hints.md documenting the new robustness features (v6.1.0+)
+
 ## 2025-12-08 - 6.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE(watchers)
 Replace polling-based write stabilization with debounce-based event coalescing and simplify watcher options