v0.2.0

[chris-colinsky]

Summary

This PR implements the Universal Alignment Strategy, decoupling the Transcription Engine (ASR) from the Word-Level Aligner. It transitions Audio Refinery to a modular architecture where ASR backends are hot-swappable while maintaining precise millisecond-level word timestamps via torchaudio MMS-FA.

To support this shift on various hardware, this PR introduces a Hybrid VRAM Lifecycle with co-resident and sequential strategies, a VRAM Budget Preflight system to prevent OOM errors, and an interactive audio-refinery plan command for validating and saving pipeline configurations.

Changes

• Refactoring: Refactored src/transcriber.py into an ASR-only, backend-agnostic wrapper for faster-whisper.
• Forced Alignment: Added src/aligner.py using torchaudio.pipelines.MMS_FA with a 30s chunking strategy.
• Text Normalization: Added src/text_normalizer.py for deterministic, phoneme-safe text expansion (numbers/currency).
• Speaker Merging: Created src/merger.py to decouple speaker assignment from the transcription logic.
• VRAM Management: Introduced src/vram_preflight.py and src/model_budgets.toml for upfront resource validation.
• Hybrid Lifecycle: Implemented co-resident (batch-optimized) and sequential (VRAM-optimized) strategies with automatic fallback.
• Interactive Planner: Added audio-refinery plan CLI command to visualize VRAM budgets and estimate runtimes.
• Run Profiles: Added support for saving and replaying validated configurations via --plan <profile.toml>.
• BREAKING: Removed words field from TranscriptionResult; all word-level data now resides in the new AlignmentResult.

Type of Change

• Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing behavior to change)
• Documentation update

Testing

• Unit tests pass: make test
• All checks pass: make all-checks
• New tests added for new functionality
• Integration tests verified (if applicable — requires GPU)

Checklist

• Code follows the project style (ruff lint + format clean)
• CHANGELOG.md updated under [Unreleased]
• Documentation updated if CLI options or behavior changed
• No new dependency pins added without explanation

Related Issues

Closes #