POST /api/projects registered a project but only started its engine lazily on the first scoped
store access, so a freshly-created project — especially the operator's FIRST project on the
desktop, where no other engine is running — left engineManager with no running engine. The
dashboard's project view then showed "AI engine is not running" (EngineUnavailableBanner keys off
/api/health engine.available). Proactively warm the engine via getOrCreateProjectStore (fires the
onProjectFirstAccessed hook -> engineManager.onProjectAccessed -> ensureEngine) right after the
project is activated, fire-and-forget so it never blocks/fails the registration response.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>