chore: consolidate CI/CD tooling, contributor docs, and beta-release setup - #11

Node.js 20 is deprecated. The following actions target Node.js 20 but are being forced to run on Node.js 24: actions/checkout@34e114876b0b11c390a56381ad16ebd13914f8d5, astral-sh/setup-uv@d4b2f3b6ecc6e67c4457f6d3e41ec42d3d0fcb86. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/