Handle unborn branches in VCS status

[zzjin]

Summary

• read the current branch for remote status with git symbolic-ref so newly initialized repositories without commits are supported
• preserve detached HEAD handling by treating it as no branch instead of turning the commit hash into a branch name
• update telemetry branch collection to tolerate unborn branches and detached HEADs

Closes #3045.

Testing

• pnpm fmt:check
• pnpm --filter t3 test -- GitVcsDriverCore.test.ts

Note: local verification emitted the repository's existing unsupported-engine warning because this environment uses Node v26.1.0 while the root package requests Node ^24.13.1.

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Note

Medium Risk
Changes how branch is derived for remote status (null on detached HEAD vs "HEAD") and alters git failure paths; limited scope but may affect UI or consumers of statusDetailsRemote.

Overview
Remote VCS status and Alchemy telemetry now resolve the current branch with git symbolic-ref --quiet --short HEAD instead of git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD, so freshly initialized repos with no commits (unborn branches) still report a branch name.

In readStatusDetailsRemote, when symbolic-ref fails, the driver checks git rev-parse --verify --quiet HEAD and only errors if both fail; otherwise it treats the repo as valid (e.g. unborn). Detached HEAD is reported as branch: null rather than the string "HEAD".

A new integration test covers statusDetailsRemote on an initialized repo with no commits.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit a53c8a0. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Handle unborn branches in VCS status by switching to git symbolic-ref

• Replaces git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD with git symbolic-ref --quiet --short HEAD in GitVcsDriverCore.ts for branch discovery, which correctly handles unborn branches (repos with no commits).
• When symbolic-ref fails (e.g. detached HEAD), a fallback git rev-parse --verify --quiet HEAD check runs; only if both fail does the function return an error. Branch is set to null when symbolic-ref fails but HEAD is still valid.
• Adds a test case for empty repositories in GitVcsDriverCore.test.ts asserting isRepo: true, branch equals the symbolic-ref output, and hasUpstream: false.
• Behavioral Change: statusDetailsRemote no longer errors on detached HEAD or unborn branches; it now returns branch: null in those cases instead.

^{Macroscope summarized a53c8a0.}

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[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 2 potential issues.

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[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Needs human review

Unable to check for correctness in a53c8a0. This PR changes runtime behavior for how VCS status handles unborn branches (returning valid status instead of erroring). There is also an unresolved review comment about Windows compatibility in the telemetry file that should be addressed before merging.

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