Older repos can keep stale git.repositoryScanIgnoredFolders until setup or doctor reruns, so the Active Agents extension now merges the managed ignore list on activation and workspace-folder changes while preserving user entries and tolerating read-only settings.

Constraint: Existing repos can have tracked .vscode/settings.json values that predate the newer managed ignore list
Rejected: Require operators to rerun gx setup or gx doctor | stale repos stay noisy in default VS Code repo scan
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Directive: Keep the managed repo-scan ignore list in sync across src/context.js and the live/template Active Agents extension copies
Tested: node --test test/vscode-active-agents-session-state.test.js test/metadata.test.js (new self-heal regression and live-template sync assertions passed; unrelated semver baseline failures remain)
Tested: openspec validate --specs
Not-tested: Full Node suite without the pre-existing local semver module failure